Celebrating at the Pride Run

I signed up to do the 30th annual Lesbian and Gay Pride Run because it's a cause I believe in, and because I need to get closer to my goal of running 9 NYRR races this year to qualify for next year's New York marathon. Little did I suspect that  the experience was going to be much more significant than that, thanks to the well-timed passage of the marriage equality bill in New York.

A rainbow Empire State Building!

My friend Julia, a Broadway nut and therefore a intimate supporter of gay rights (they're pretty inseparable in New York), has been really active in the quest for marriage equality in New York, and she did a great job of getting her friends involved in the civic process of making our voices heard; while I participated, I can't claim that it was entirely because I was proactive, because it was really more my friendship with Julia that got me moving. She appeared on various news programs covering the campaign several times, once alongside Lance Bass, former member of N'Sync (the Backstreet Boys? Is there a difference?) who came out several years ago and is a major gay rights activist now. Julia sent out emails with phone numbers of various representatives and told us whom to call and what to say. I joined thousands of New Yorkers in making calls to various government officials in the days leading up to the vote to go on record as being a supporter of the bill. Honestly, this was the most user-friendly democratic process I've ever been a part of. Thirty seconds later, I could say I'd done my civic duty for the day. The night before the race, the results were announced, and the city exploded into celebration: we won! I haven't heard anybody say a single negative word about the results, though I'm sure they're out there.




I wonder how many gay New Yorkers planned to do the Pride Run and celebrated a little too heartily on Friday night to be able to make it out the next morning... Even without that inevitable segment of the population, this was still the biggest Pride Run on record, with over 5,000 participants. I had tweaked my left calf somehow while running on Thursday night, so I planned to take it easy and just enjoy myself. Ferran and Uri joined me at about 8:15 outside my building, and within 15 minutes we'd walked to registration in the upper part of Central park and were attaching our bibs and d-tags. A flamboyant gay man whose enthusiasm far overshadowed his talent sang the national anthem, and we were off.

It was terribly humid, and I was glad I'd decided to cruise this morning instead of running hard. I got stuck in some serious gridlock at the beginning, which kept my pace slow whether I wanted it to be or not, but by the time I got out of it I felt pretty good and ran the remaining 4.5 miles at a quicker, but still comfortable clip.

I always enjoy watching the spectators, but, as you can imagine, they were particularly entertaining during this race. Two women, each dressed in white running outfits and veils, held hands and cheered for us as we ran by. A man cheerfully brandished a sign that said, "Running is gay," and I was not offended, for once. I passed a tall man in a speedo who had painted "If you like it..." on his chest, and "put a ring on it!" on his back. I'm not sure whether it was my position nearer to the back of the pack than usual, the fact that I could breathe and think instead of being too busy gasping to notice anything, or simply the nature of the race, but it seemed a lot more laid back than other races I've entered. It felt more like a party.

I crossed the finish line feeling sticky but not too tired and immediately found a popsicle and Ferran, in that order. Uri headed home, but Ferran and I stayed to watch the cheerleaders, who apparently cheer at every Pride Run, and the awards ceremony and raffle results. I've never stayed for either of these events before, but this seemed like a good opportunity to start. I was glad I did, because the mistress of ceremonies was a tall drag queen named Peppermint Gummybear. I want to hang out with her. She was hilarious. She said that this is the third Pride Run she has been a part of, and that, while she did not run in the race, she ran down from Harlem to get to the race earlier that morning and broke a heel. I somehow doubted this was true. Anyway, I've never seen someone who needed to wear heels less than she did.

Peppermint Gummybear

Freebies from this race were a rather stylish white, breatheable baseball cap with the race logo on it and a small navy blue backpack. The best part, fleeting though it may have been, was the popsicle, though. The outer layer was green and stained my lips and teeth, which I thought contrasted rather fetchingly with my red face. I managed to get most of it off before Ferran snapped the picture below. Viva pride!

Run Less and Run Faster? Yes, Please.

My far-flung friend Conor, a buddy from both Cate and Vanderbilt who now lives in Paris, calls me after races to ask how things went. This is very nice of him. Conor wasn't much of a runner when I knew him, but something clicked in France for him, and now he's a turbo marathoner and triathlete. He's very committed to training and clocks extremely impressive times. I love talking shop with him. During our conversation after my marathon, after affectionately (I think) berating me for running a really stupid race, he recommended a book called Run Less, Run Faster. Conor's had knee problems, too, and he said this book has slashed minutes from his race times while taking a lot of the strain off his knees. He swears by it. Intrigued, I bought a copy.

Within the first three pages, I had received a second berating for running a stupid race. The authors explained exactly why I shouldn't have done what I did as well as providing justification for running a solidly paced race. I knew this, but had never had it explained in this way and it hit home immediately.

The premise of the book is that you do three running workouts a week, two of which are really pretty short. Workout #1 is always a series of timed intervals. These are fast, but not too long. For example, last Tuesday I ran intervals of 1200, 1000, 800, 600, 400, and 200 meters at the pace I'd have run if I were doing 6:20 miles and then I was DONE. Workout #2 is always a pretty short distance, again at a pretty quick pace. Last Thursday I will do five miles at 7:30 per mile and this week I will do three miles at 7:15. Workout #3 is longer but, again, faster than I'd normally go. I was scheduled to do nine miles on Saturday - can't remember the pace, but it was something like 8:00 - but instead I ran a 10k race with a two mile warm-up. Eh, close enough. The books is full of charts and tables. You pick your target race time, and it tells you exactly which workouts to do and how fast to do them. This is great for those of us that are, ahem, math averse. I find it easy to stay on pace for the intervals - in fact, I generally finish faster than I'm supposed to. I have a really tough time with the mid- and longer-distance tempo runs, though. It's a work in progress.

Cross-training is the other half of the equation. Twice a week I can choose between half an hour of cycling, swimming, rowing, time on an elliptical machine, or just about anything else that spares my knees while still getting my heart rate up. My favorite of these is swimming. Running can get a bit, well, tiresome occasionally. No matter how good the audiobook, you're still plodding along the same few routes. I am loving the variety in this plan, however.

If you add it up, it's not a lot of mileage for a half-marathon. However, I find myself much more tired than I was after longer workouts in preparation for previous half-marathons because the pace is so much faster than I'm used to. I generally do whichever workout I've scheduled for the day in the morning, and because they're short I have plenty of time to finish, shower, and get to work. I really like this schedule. I have more energy during the day, and it leaves my evenings open to meet friends for dinner, run errands, or just relax. (Plus it's too bloody hot to run after work...) My knees have both felt great throughout this first month of training - although the one I fell on a few months ago still has a rather large lump of unattractive scar tissue below the joint - and I can already tell that I'm getting faster.

I'll get to test my mettle in about two more months, when I'm scheduled to be done with my workouts and will run the Bronx (Staten Island?) Half. In the meantime, more early morning workouts interspersed with shorter races to get me to my total of nine for 2011!

Real Women, Real Sex, Real Awesome

Still riding high from the excitement of seeing Sebastian Junger, I went to East 92nd Street the following night after a tutoring appointment to see a panel called "Real Women Talk About Real Sex." Though the topic sounded, obviously, titillating on at least some levels, the real draw for me was not the discussion itself but the fact that my revered Eve Ensler would be speaking. Eve Ensler!

Eve Ensler is most famous for writing The Vagina Monologues, a play comprised of a series of (duh) monologues in which women talk in a startlingly frank way about, well, you can probably imagine. Ensler did hundreds of interviews with all kinds of women, and although the monologues are mostly fictional, they are very much inspired by what she learned along the way. Of course, what's so fascinating about the play is that it's not really about vaginas but about the experience of being a woman. Some of the monologues are hysterically funny, some are heartbreaking, and some are so true you wonder whether she's been watching you with a cleverly hidden surveillance camera. It was terribly scandalous when it was first performed, but now it's been translated into something like 48 languages and is performed in hundreds of countries. Pretty incredible stuff. I first saw it at Vanderbilt, where it was performed every year on Valentine's Day. Ensler has since become a huge proponent of women's rights, starting foundations and raising money to help disadvantaged women around the world have more opportunities. Not only did I both read and see The Vagina Monologues, I've listened to several interviews with Ensler, read her newest play I am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Lives of Girls, and listened to an audiobook of her play The Good Body, in which she travels around the world and interviews women about body image. I couldn't believe we were about to be in the same room!

 The 92nd Street Y has a beautiful theater, and it was filled, to my surprise, with an older crowd. The average age in the room was probably 60, and that was after accounting for the quarter or so of the audience that was around my age. Everyone else was white-haired and did not look like the sort of people an event like this would draw. Perusing the program before the panel began, I checked out the other kinds of events hosted by the Y and got my answer: lots of bird watching and museum expeditions and Singles Nights for ages 45 and up.

At last, a woman came to the podium and introduced the speakers. The panel would be moderated by Erika Jong, author of lots of books I'd never heard of. Also on the panel was her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, author of The Social Climber's Handbook which is about a serial killer attempting to maintain her high class position by bumping off the opposition (or something). Ensler, as I may have already mentioned, would also be there, as well as two other women: Dominique Merkin, frequent contributor to the New York Times, the New Yorker, and every other prestigious publication you've ever heard of, and Ann Roiphe, who managed to write 19 books without my ever knowing she existed.

Ensler sported a short, spiky haircut and a busily-patterned, brightly-colored top. She was wearing wild African-style jewelry which included a silver necklace with lots of little beads that tinkled like a wind chime every time she made a vehement point, which was a lot. I thought the topic and the commentary about it was interesting, but it seemed odd to me that they didn't have a younger, single woman present to represent her viewpoint. Ensler has an adult son but has eschewed marriage, and everyone else was very much pro-marriage (so much so that some of them did it several times!) and seemed set on the idea of a nuclear family. Jong-Fast, the youngest panel member, was pretty traditional in her views, fitting in more with the older women than with most of my peers. She seemed to think she was quite funny although no one else did. She and her mother were, in my opinion, the weakest members of the panel. Roiphe made some fascinating comparisons between 2011 and women's situation when she was growing up in the early '50s. At one point she turned to Ensler and exclaimed, "You're a miracle! That someone like you could even exist, someone who shapes her own sexuality and life, was totally inconceivable when I was a teenager." A woman next to me murmured, "Isn't that the truth."

It seems safe to say that no conclusions were reached. Merkin summed it up nicely by quoting the end of her own piece which ran in the Times recently: "What do women want? Try asking them one by one." Still, interesting points were made about how patriarchy is restrictive to both women and to men and how sometimes what is best for the mental health of an individual may not be best for the welfare of society. Ensler said that she has long wrestled with how to honor one's self and still exist productively in society at the same time. And Jong chirped up that she will know women have finished evolving when they wear comfortable shoes.

"Beth - To your emotional creature!"

As with the Junger reading, I had my copy of I am an Emotional Creature along, just in case there was a book signing. I was actually first in line but had to wait a while for the panelists to come to the table. Ensler beamed at me and thanked me when I told her how much I'd enjoyed her books, and that, having worked in both a high school and a middle school, I am an Emotional Creature really rang true to me. I tripped giddily into the night, signed book clutched in one hand, and waited at the bus stop with several clusters of women chattering excitedly about their views on the issues raised by the panel. I didn't talk to them, but it somehow felt like a bonding experience anyway.

Anne Roiphe, my neighbor

The next morning, I was about to descend the subway stairs to head to work when, to my surprise, I saw someone who looked just like Ann Roiphe walking out of Gristedes supermarket. I hesitated a second, then threw caution to the wind and tapped her on the shoulder. She confirmed that she had indeed been part of last night's panel, thanked me for coming, and said she was glad I enjoyed it. Encounters like this make me wonder just how many interesting, influential people I pass each day without knowing it. If I hadn't happened to attend the panel discussion just the night before, I'd have walked right by her without a second glance. New York is full of very visible celebrities, but it's the ones who aren't so visible that fascinate me.

Sebastian Junger's War

Last week, I read in the back of New York Magazine that Sebastian Junger would be giving a talk at a Barnes and Noble on the Upper West Side and immediately cleared my calendar. Junger is the author of, among other great works, The Perfect Storm. He started off as a journalist who trimmed trees on the side to make ends meet, but eventually decided that the only way he was going to get his big break was if he was willing to go where few others would, so off he went to Bosnia. He's been covering wars all over the place since then. His most recent book, aptly called War, recounts his experiences with a group of soldiers stationed in the Korengal Valley, one of the hottest conflict zones of Afghanistan. Junger did not carry a weapon and realized pretty early on that it was going to be difficult to maintain journalistic objectivity. He spent alternate months with the small group of soldiers, sleeping, eating, traveling, and dodging bullets whenever they did. Mostly, they were stationed on a thin ridge high above surrounding mountains. In summer it was scorching hot, and in winter bitterly cold. Junger acknowledges that war is hell, but he was bent on trying to determine what it was that makes young men miss it when they're back home again despite the deprivation, terror, and violence they experience on a daily basis during their tours. 

Junger got to  know the men* in "his" unit very well. He said that, given the nature of the situation, there was never a moment when anyone was fewer than ten feet from you. Once, his group was almost blown up when an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) detonated an instant too early, so that the engine block of their Humvee was destroyed rather than the internal compartment where they all sat. This is the sort of experience that leads to some pretty serious interpersonal connections. Junger described the way the soldiers covered each other in fire fights, volunteered to go first into dangerous situations, and generally risked their lives on countless occasions to protect the men they regarded as more than brothers. Junger believes that bond is one of the things that men miss when they come back to civilization because it simply cannot be replicated in any other situation, at least not to the same degree. He also believes they miss the adrenaline. Young men, he pointed out to us, are adrenaline junkies. In fact, in a staggering irony, young men who join the military are statistically safer than they would be if they stayed in the civilian world where they can drink too much, drive too fast, experiment with drugs, and obtain firearms without the kind of training and supervision they get in the military. It was a surprising and interesting observation. He made some fascinating statements about the sadness that comes between bouts of fighting, and about how life in the battlefield is stripped to its bare essentials. There, you know who you are, and you are valued because you do things that matter. Back home, however, Junger pointed out that "it's high school all over again."



Junger was very serious during the talk, largely because of the serious nature of the content, I suppose. (Although, with the faintest suggestion of a smile at the end of his talk, he did threaten to call on us at random if no one had any questions.) Adding further sobriety to the event was the fact that his partner, a film maker named Tim Herrington who accompanied him to Afghanistan and with whom he made the award-winning documentary Restrepo, was killed recently in Libya while covering the conflict there. Junger gazed levelly out at the audience with blue eyes that shone out of his tanned, weather-beaten face. He spoke slowly and with effortless eloquence. His button-down shirt was open enough to reveal a strip of his broad, hairy chest, and his stance behind the podium was wide and steady. Oh yeah, this was a guy who's seen some things.



Having learned from past experience, I had purchased a copy of his book on Amazon about a week before the talk, and so as soon as the applause died down, I vaulted out of my second row seat (I got there really early and was rewarded with a spot front and center) and was fourth or fifth in line. As usual, I got completely tongue-tied when it was my turn to meet Junger. I thanked him for coming and then he thanked me for coming. It was a bit awkward. Luckily, an employee had been writing our names on post-it notes and sticking them on the title pages to streamline the process, and Junger was able to carry on without much more participation from me. Now I've got yet another signed book for the collection, and the copy of War I requested is waiting at my local public library for pick-up, since I obviously can't carry my pristine autographed edition around in my purse to read on the subway.

New York is consistently a terribly expensive place to live. But free events like this one really balance things out. Well, a little.

*The unit Junger followed was composed entirely of men, so while he acknowledged the contribution of women to the armed forces near the beginning of his talk, he never mentioned women again after that.

All the World's a Stage

This last week has made me feel that this is actually true, in the literal sense. I’ve been to four pretty incredible performances (well, two of them, which I will describe in upcoming entries, may not count as performances – you can be the judge of that) in the last week, three of them in the last three days. Just when I think the richness of the cultural events in New York cannot impress me more, it does.

Anything Goes

Last week I joined some friends to see Anything Goes on Broadway. It’s a show that’s been around for a while, but it has been newly released on Broadway and this particular version of it was supposed to be great. Anyway, Julia has impeccable taste, and if she says a show is worth seeing, I’m the first to say I’ll go with her. Irwin, a friend of hers, got us all discounted tickets through NYU, and we settled into seats in the balcony on Wednesday night ready for a good show.

Reviewing the program before the show began, I saw that there were quite a few actors worth getting excited about, if you’re into that sort of thing. Julia and her friends are REALLY into that sort of thing. They were most looking forward to seeing the actor playing Moonface Martin, a guy named Joel Grey. Go figure I’d never heard of him, but my companions gushed that he has been in simply everything, most notably in the original cast of Cabaret, where he played the Master of Ceremonies and won a Tony, then an Academy Award for the same role in the movie version. Also of note was Jessica Walter (in the role of  Evangeline Harcourt), famous for playing the mother in the very funny TV series Arrested Development.

Sutton Foster, though, absolutely stole the show as Reno Sweeney, and with a supporting cast like the one she had, that is no small statement. As the wry, wise-cracking sidekick to the show’s male lead – not his romantic interest, it must be noted for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the show; the romantic interests in these productions tend to be simpering and uninteresting – she was the best actress I think I’ve seen on Broadway yet. I’m not alone in that assessment – just four days after we saw the show, Foster won a Tony for Best Leading Actress. The show has some pretty cheesy lines and songs. I’d describe Cole Porter, who wrote the score, as eccentric if I was going to be nice and as a certifiable lunatic if I wasn’t. Instead of cringing inwardly and trying to be sincere as she delivered some of these ridiculous lines, Foster’s performance was tongue-in-cheek and downright hilarious.

On top of that, the dancing was out of this world – the show won another Tony for best choreography – the sets were great, and the costumes were spectacular. This was definitely one of my more enjoyable Broadway experiences.

As You Like It

Turns out I was a bit mislead about the nature of this “performance,” but luckily it all worked out anyway. I bought two tickets through Symphony Space and invited Ed to come with me. When I finally arrived at the theater, late, as usual, he asked me whether we were going to see a movie. “Uh, no,” I replied, thinking him a bit thick. “It’s a play.” He pointed out that it was listed under the “Films” heading in a brochure he’d been perusing while waiting for me, and I was initially a bit disappointed (largely because the tickets were $20 each, which I thought was a bit steep for a movie).

Good old Will sure loved a good cross-dressing gag...

It didn’t take long for me to decide that this was a pretty unique movie experience, though. The film was a recorded performance at The Globe Theater in England, but it wasn’t the kind of recording your dad made at your third grade school play; there were close-ups of important characters at all the right moments, and different cameras captured events from different angles of the stage, so we had what felt like the best seats in the house. It was pretty cool to be able to watch the play against the same background that it would have been originally performed before, and the actors were phenomenal (as one would expect from people chosen to perform Shakespeare in The Globe in England). I also enjoyed seeing the audience members watching the show in the background of most of the shots. While it was sometimes distracting – there was a teenage boy in one of the first rows who slept through just about the whole show – it made the whole experience much more authentic, as if we were actually there. At the same time, though we had the benefit of watching it surrounded by real people who gasped, laughed, and clapped along with us. A perfect compromise.

The play itself was fantastic. I had never seen it before, nor read it, and it was great to put context behind some of the famous characters I’ve heard about and lines I’ve seen quoted (like the one that titles this entry). I’ve always liked Shakespeare, but I find that I appreciate his work more and more as I get older. Watching a really talented Shakespearean actor at work makes his sometimes tricky language very easy to understand, and all of these actors were masters of their craft. The story line was, admittedly, a bit contrived, but there were some really funny moments, and the 2 ½ hours flew by.

I hope that this is just the beginning of a summer filled with great performances of all kinds!

Girl Power! The NYRR Mini-Marathon

On Saturday, I got up early and headed to Central Park for the 40th annual Mini-Marathon, a race held by the New York Road Runners. According to the training plan I'm following, I was supposed to run 9 miles, and the race was only a 10K (6.2 miles), so I ran down to the starting line, which was a little over two miles from my apartment, at a pretty good clip, both to warm up and get in a little extra distance. I checked in about ten minutes before the race was supposed to start, and clipped on my number as I jogged towards the starting line. Nothing like cutting it close to get the old adrenaline going.

In the starting corral, I stretched and listened to the founder of the race talk about its history (it was the first all-women's race in the world) and introduce some of the top contenders, who included some national record-holders in various events, Olympians, and New York marathon winners. She also introduced the two men who would be running the event: the brother and husband/coach of the famous Greta (pronounced "Greta") Waitz. Grete died of cancer this year, but when she was in her prime, she won the New York marathon nine times, the most times any runner, male or female, has ever won such a major event. The race was dedicated to her, and this was the first time in its history that a man has ever completed it. (Not sure what the brother's time was, but her 63-year-old husband beat me by three minutes.) Then the gun went off and away we went.

I'm back in the 1000's - you can just see the red sign to the left.

The race took us north on Central Park West for a bit, then veered into Central Park where we followed the running track that goes around the perimeter. It had felt pretty chilly that morning and so I was wearing 3/4-length tights. These turned out to be a bad idea, as it was cool but really humid and I found it hard to ventilate with the long pants on, as well as to breathe! 4,500 women of all descriptions bobbed around me, from leonine 20-year-olds skimming by with annoying effortlessness to gray-haired women in jaunty visors. One girl had tattoos completely covering both arms from shoulder to wrist. A team from Sweden stuck out in blue and yellow baseball caps. It was pretty cool to be part of this huge surge of women sweeping through Central Park, and to pass crowds of men left to cheer on the sidelines.

Other than the heat and the occasional taxing hill - hills in Central Park aren't steep, but they are long - I felt pretty good. I finished in 50:39, hot on the heels of the winner who crossed the finish line in 31:50. That's about eight minute per mile, and I would have been a bit faster if I'd made more of an effort to get out of the gridlock in the beginning instead of lollygagging around and enjoying the scene. I was reasonably happy with my time, although I look forward to my new training plan making me faster in the future. I received water, a medal, and a pink carnation on the other side of the finish line, and wandered over to the stage to listen to the emcee talking about race history and women in running for a few minutes before trudging back home to shower.

My loot. Alas, my carnation stem snapped on the jog home.

It was a good race, and I look forward to the next one in just a little under two weeks! If I'm going to qualify automatically for the 2012 New York marathon, I need to run nine NYRR events before the end of 2011. The Mini was only #2 - I'm a bit behind because of my knee injury after the DC marathon - but I'm registered for four more this summer, so I should have no problem getting up to nine in time.

Old Flat, New Flair III

In my poorly designed kitchen, my fridge sticks out exactly 13 inches beyond the edge of the cabinet that holds my sink, which left a usable but underutilized space. I bought a $29 dresser from Ikea (they had one that was exactly 13 inches deep!), some paint, glue, and drawer pulls, and turned it into what is probably the coolest piece of furniture in my apartment.
*Note: This is hardly a sweeping statement... 

How perfect is this fit?

I found the Elmer's Glue technique online while I was poking around looking for painting techniques that looked complicated but were actually easy to pull off. I was a bit skeptical that it would really work, but I read multiple articles that swore it was the real thing, and the dresser was so cheap I figured I could pick up another one if I totally botched it.

Here's what I did:

Step 1
I painted the dresser with a deep red basecoat. I could have left the plain, unfinished pine as the first layer, but I wanted something with color. I let it dry completely (very important).

Step 2
I smeared it liberally with Elmer's. The more glue, the bigger the cracks. I didn't want huge cracks, but I went a bit nuts with the glue. Whoops... Good thing I like the basecoat color.

I bought a brush dedicated solely to glue, although since the Elmer's is water-soluble it actually came off pretty well.

Step 3
After waiting for the glue to get tacky - i.e. starting to dry and look a bit more opaque -  I covered the whole thing with a bone-colored paint.

How tacky!

Step 4
Wait, watch, whoa! The cracks started to appear after just a few minutes and became larger and more defined as time went by. It was pretty cool to watch! From what I can tell, the glue pulls cracks in the top coat as it dries, revealing whatever color you put underneath.

Starting off...

...and getting bigger!

Close-up of a finished drawer. The real thing looks more white and less yellow.

Had my cracks been smaller and had I chosen either plain wood or a brown color underneath, the dresser would have looked like an antique. As it is, it looks funky and unique, and has become a stylish place to stash reusable bags, votive candles, and whatever else that used to be homeless.

Ta-da!

Fresh from the Fire Escape

Believe it or not, this lettuce, which I turned into a salad moments after taking this picture, was grown on my very own fire escape!

 Growing lettuce is a lot easier than I thought it would be, although I suspect that my remaining crop is not long for this world. I've had to keep the plants in small-ish pots which dry out really quickly, and the leaves are often droopy and dismal by the time I get home in the evening, despite a liberal morning watering. While it lasts, though, it's great to just lean out my window and make a salad.

Also in my "garden" are peppers and tomatoes (both with flowers!), cilantro, and some very sad looking basil. 

Don't Drink the Water

I was hired for my new job because I'm awesome, and because the current learning specialist (whom I'll call "E" because I'm not sure how wild she'd be about my writing about her on the Internet) is expecting a baby in about two weeks. She hopes to come back once a week after he's born, but they need someone full time, hence my hire. E is fantastic at her job and is leaving some seriously huge shoes to fill. She's a school psychologist by training, so she knows a ton about the different assessment measures we use, as well as having a really great intuitive sense for how kids' minds work. I'm sorry to see her go.

The other learning specialist, V, comes in once a week. She's great too, although I see a lot less of her - obviously - than I do of E. V is pregnant, too, with her third child, and she and her family are moving to North Carolina soon after the baby is born. About four years ago, V worked full time. Then she got pregnant with her first son, so E came in to take her place. Now V is moving, E is pregnant with plans to come in once a week, and I am taking E's place. Dr. Yellin made a very disturbing comment about the cyclical nature of life at the Yellin Center, to which I burst out, "I don't even have a boyfriend!"

Luckily L, the school psychologist, is nowhere near maternity, and neither is R, our intrepid receptionist. Still, I rarely seem them; I work closely with E every day, and with V every Thursday, which sometimes makes it seem like everyone else in the world has pretty different priorities than I do. Who's to say that in four years I won't be training my replacement while fighting off cravings for pickles and cooing over doilies (or whatever it is pregnant women spend their time doing)? Until then, it's safe to say that the very idea makes me want a martini. Bad.