Death! Sort of.

First, it was our computer. Our beloved new iMac, so modern, so lamp-ish, its keyboard so not-yet-encrusted-with-food (although I’ve been working hard to amend that). Scott was doing something fancy with video when it made a noise like fehhhhh and its screen drooped on its base* and then everything was dark; so dark, and so so cold. Our attempts at resuscitation, which I shall enumerate below, all failed, although as you can see they were failproof! They were:

- Cursing at the dead computer.

- Pleading with the dead computer to come back to life.

- Watching Scott attempt to run various programs that purport to bring computers back to life.

- Yelling at Scott to call someone who knows what he’s doing.

- Thinking about all the stories, and all the Henry photos, that were never backed up.

- Crying.

- Pleading with the tech expert who arrived to fix the computer to please, for the love of God, just fix the computer.

In the end, it is only a bad motherboard (I so want to tell someone it’s a bad mother... and then have them say "Shut your mouth!" but so far no one’s been quick enough, damn it), which can be replaced with no loss of precious, precious data. But the motherboard has not yet been replaced, and I am forced—forced!—to write on this piddly little laptop, the laptop that until a few months ago was the only computer in the house, but that now seems so primitive, so loud and droning, and so very, very slow.

We were still reeling from the loss of our computer when our rental car died. We were on our way back from a wedding when the car began to sputter and retch (its front bumper actually became a frowny mouth and its headlights turned into heavy-lidded eyes and it said "kaff, kaff" YES IT DID) and Scott shrieked "As god is my witness, we will not die on the New Jersey Turnpike" and with that, he maneuvered the dying car toward the nearest exit, and we put-putted our way to a glorious Hess Express in scenic Edison, New Jersey.

Have you ever been to this Hess Express? Oh, it’s a marvel! You can buy M&Ms there! And Combos! Which we did! Because we were there for over 3 hours!

If you visit the Hess Express in Edison, NJ, here is what will happen:

- If you are a lady, you will have cause to visit the ladies’ room. The ladies’ room appears to be clean but there is almost certainly uncleanliness afoot; I say this because of the stench of death that makes it exceedingly difficult, after the first gag-inducing visit, to stomach the idea of a return. And when you’re sitting in a car for over 3 hours eating PayDay bars and drinking bottled water, you will have to return to the ladies’ room. There is no avoiding it.

- If you are a man, I have been assured that the men's room is "not that bad." Perhaps you will also get a death-whiff as you pass by the ladies' room. I hope, for your sake, you do not.

- A closed Blimpies counter will announce an exciting new Blimpies treat: The Bluffin.

- You will make "Bluffin" jokes for the next three hours. Bluffin! Because it just sounds dirty.

- You will see that kids hang out at the Hess Express. It’s the place to be, if you’re in Edison, NJ. You will rethink any ideas you ever had about living in the suburbs.

Luckily, Henry was at his grandparents’ while we paced the perimeter of the Hess Express (there is nothing outside its perimeter, YOU CANNOT LEAVE THE HESS EXPRESS). Eventually another car was brought to us. Unfortunately it was the same exact make, which in case I didn’t mention it previously, and I see that I didn’t, is the Suzuki Swift, a terrifying tin-can of a car designed to make you feel as vulnerable as possible. It's like wrapping your body in aluminum foil, strapping a couple of Hot Wheels to your feet, placing yourself at the entrance of, say, I-95, and having a friend give you a helpful shove. Only more so. That is the Suzuki Swift Experience. I recommend it!

So we managed to make it home with this new Swift, only to have it die, yes, DIE (do you see a theme?) the next day.

All of this death was worth it, just for this: the day after our Suzuki Swift adventure, Scott was congratulating himself for his manly decisiveness in the face of adversity. We were walking down the street, and he was nattering on about how his quick wits saved our lives, and how apparently this was due to his extreme manliness; so caught up was he in this delusion that he began to demand that I pay homage to his masculinity, which I did, halfheartedly repeating, yes, Husband is manly, Husband is decisive, blar de blar—when he began slapping at his glasses and shrieking. I would call what he was doing "girlish shrieking," but it would be an insult to girls everywhere. Let’s just say that he was shouting "Oh jeez oh jeez!" and his voice might have been a few octaves higher than normal. Before I could ask him what was going on, he removed his glasses, looked down, and said, "Oh. It was a, um, ladybug." I laughed, of course, really hard, and there might have been some pointing of fingers on my part, and he got all defensive (again with the girlish rising of the voice) and said, "It landed right inside my glasses! It looked really big!"

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*It didn't really do that. Please don't send me angry emails accusing me of lying. I embellish because I love.

An Alice comes in many guises.

I am beset with work (the paying kind, not the baby kind), which is good, of course, except that I have neglected my poor little infant blog, and if I can’t take care of a 4-month-old blog, how can I ever expect to take care of a child?

Speaking of which!

I dislike it when people say, “I’m not sure if I’m going to have a baby, because, you know, I can’t even take care of a plant.” Because 1) one does not generally have the depth of feeling for a plant that one is biologically compelled to have for one’s offspring, and 2) a baby is not a plant, only more so. They’re actually sort of different from plants. Get out your biology textbook, put it side by side with your horticulture textbook, and study for a while. I’ll be here waiting.

And now I supply an anecdote!

(What do you think of these segues? I’m working on creating the most awkward segues imaginable.)

(You know what’s a great word? Segue.)

Saturday morning. The doorbell rings. It’s a large and merry band of religious proselytizers! They implore my kind, yet Jewish, husband to accept Jesus, but he politely demurs. Then they stand outside our window and jabber at each other about Jesus, and how great it is to love Jesus, and oh, Jesus Jesus Jesus, if he were there right then they’d want to give him a GREAT BIG HUG because they love him THAT MUCH. Now, seeing as how they’re leaning against our window and talking so loudly they might as well come on in, pour themselves some coffee, and wrench our unholy bagels right out of our blasphemous hands, I have the nerve to ask them if they might leave. I heretically lean toward the window and godlessly ask, “Do you think you could walk away now?”

“We’re doing the Lord’s work!” one of the proselytizers exclaims. “We’re here in Christ!”

“That’s swell. But it’s time to be somewhere else in Christ,” I say (more or less; it was probably something less clever than that. But this is my blog! Here I can be clever! Hello!).

At that, there is huffing and muttering among the group, but they eventually shuffle away—about five inches. That’s five inches more than Christ would have wanted!

A few minutes later, I’m leaving my apartment, off for a few hours of (undevout) freedom from the (heathen) child, when I pass the group of proselytizers (notice how I’m subtly not mentioning their religion, so as not to alienate any readers who might share that particular faith! Do you love me? You do!), who are now standing in the middle of the sidewalk, DOING THE LORD’S WORK by blocking everyone’s path, when the woman I had verbally tussled with grabs one of the child-proselytizers by the shoulders, turns him toward me, and said, “A satan comes in many guises.”

Does anyone know what "a satan" is? I am, of course, intimately familiar with Satan, but "a" Satan? What, I'm not good enough to be the real thing? Jesus.

And she didst have the sickness, and the sickness didst prevent her from tending to her blog.

And God did declareth thus: unto thee there shall be given great pains; yea, thou shalt have the soreness of throat, as well as achiness of limbs, and thou shalt whine and call all of thine friends and family to update them on thine escalating fevers, but no one shalt care very much, as fevers are not all that interesting.

This is what happens when you complain about your poor child’s sickness—you get smitten by the Lord. I’m not all that religious, but I know a good smiting when I see it.

Today—healthy at last!—we bounded, skipping and singing and tossing Cheerios to the wind, all the way to our music class, our artsy funky look-how-New-Yorky music class that’s held in the far hipper neighborhood of Fort Greene. This was the first time I didn’t go with my friend S., as we managed to infect both S. and her daughter with our plague. So I was thinking, hey, maybe for once I’d socialize with some of the strangers in our little song-circle; maybe I’d make a new friend in some hipster-mama Fort Greener. (I think the fact that I just referred to someone from Fort Greene as a “Fort Greener” makes me so unhip that I will never be invited to any of their sex parties.) (They have sex parties, right? The hipsters? Someone’s gotta be having them.) (Not that I would go to one, even if I was invited. Hi, Dad!) But by the time I got there I was sweaty and shaky, suffering some residual badness from the death-virus that only recently finished ravaging my innards, and Henry was caterwauling because the precious Cheerios had disappeared (see above, re: Cheerios, tossing of). And all the mothers were already in their circle, all talking with each other and laughing and gesturing with their clean-shirted arms, and I realized that they all probably were disgusted by my presence, and anyway, I was not in any kind of shape to socialize. So Henry and I sat down and kept to ourselves until it was time for us to sing songs about hailing cabs and hugging homeless people. The one father who goes to the class made a late entrance and sat next to me, and although his cute, large-headed child was engaging with my equally cute and somewhat equally large-headed child, I could not for the life of me catch his eye to say something that I wanted to say, which was, “Your kid’s head is bigger than my kid’s head! What do you know!” Which would not have been a good or clever thing to say, but I really wanted to say it, because his head! Was so! Big! But this father was too handsome to talk with me, so instead he chatted with a gorgeous woman to his right. Here’s what I’m pretty sure they were saying:

Handsome father: You know, I find it a burden to be so handsome, when I am also so hip.

Gorgeous mother: I know exactly what you mean. As you may have noticed, I’m breathtaking.

HF: Indeed.

GM: It’s good, though. I do like being pretty.

[They laugh and nod.]

GM: [whispering] That woman sitting next to you? With the sweaty pits and nervous laugh? She’s not that gorgeous.

HF: [shakes head sadly.] I’m afraid not.

GM: You know what we should do? Judge her.

HF: Hey, I was already judging her, when you said that! I was judging her, right then!

GM: You don’t say! Would you like to come to my sex party?

Toddlers are less fun when they're sick.

The child is sick and has been crying crying crying nonstop for hours every day and as he screams my mind gets all dark and I feel like those evil little imps from the movie “Ghost” that go “bleah bleah” as they seep out of the shadows to drag the bad people into hell. (Yes, I just made a “Ghost” reference. I have not the mental energy to come up with something more clever. Someday I’ll make a Svankmajer reference, and won’t you be impressed then? Won’t you?) He’s in a constant state of crisis, always frantically needing something that is impossible to deliver, since apparently feverish toddlers believe that their teary protests will rend the fabric of reality, so that the very item they desire will come bounding toward them from some alternate universe. So, for instance, he wants a cracker BUT NOT THAT CRACKER! OH GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU JUST OFFERED ME THE ONE CRACKER I DO NOT WANT, DAMN YOU, THE INJUSTICE, I WILL CLUTCH AT YOUR ANKLES AND WEEP WHILE POINTING AT THE SHELVES AT SOME OTHER BOX THAT ISN’T CRACKERS BUT SWEET CHRIST STOP TELLING ME IT ISN’T CRACKERS, JUST GIVE ME THE CRACKERS THAT SHOULD BE IN THERE, I DON’T CARE HOW IT’S DONE, I DON’T WANT TO HEAR YOUR LOGIC! I WILL SCREAM LOUDER, SO YOU GET THE POINT! AAAAAAIGH! NOW DO YOU SEE!

I am completely, utterly drained. I keep thinking he’s feeling better and then I’ll try to, say, put his shoes on and he’ll rip off the happy mask and shriek I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE PUTTING SHOES ON ME AT A MOMENT LIKE THIS, THE PRECISE MOMENT WHEN THE LAST THING I NEEDED OR COULD HANDLE WAS SHOES! I DEMAND TO GO OUTSIDE TO THE GLASS- AND POOP-FESTOONED STREET BUT I WILL NEVER WEAR THOSE FOOT COVERINGS! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME LIVE BY YOUR RULES! HERE IS MORE SCREAMING FOR YOU!

He’s finally taking a nap although GOD HE DIDN’T WANT TO, WHY DID I PUT HIM IN THE CRIB OF DOOM. But, oh, he’ll wake up.