Grand Jury, Part II

"A roller coaster ride of boredom, horror, hilarity, and sociopathic behavior!"

--pullquote from the imaginary review for my upcoming movie, "Grand Jury: No, It's Not Like Regular Jury, There's Not a Trial, It's…Forget It, Just Forget It."

Well, that happened. For two weeks I was trapped in a windowless room, either falling asleep waiting for a case or listening to an an exhausted ADA listing 48 separate charges that sounded suspiciously alike; trying not to sympathetically break down along with any number of traumatized witnesses; or silently pleading with my associates to stop engaging in asinine fights with each other during deliberations. One of my fellow jurors on the last day observed, "This was like the worst summer camp ever."  Worst summer camp ever, or BEST?  I would rather do just about anything than go back to summer camp, but then I was never much for "team sports" or "deer ticks."

Actually it wasn't that bad. (I went to drama camp! Can you tell?) Sure, it was occasionally harrowing and often dull, and sure, far too many restroom-users seemed to be incapable of flushing (or was this some form of civil disobedience?) but I got to meet a fascinating array of people, the vast majority of whom were committed to sussing out the facts in each case and doing the right thing. Plus, we had laughs. Oh, but there were laughs!

I was determined in the beginning not to a) talk to anyone or b) like anyone but their charms were too much and by the end we were having lunch together and chatting during coffee breaks. Then the talk began of maintaining friendships beyond our duties, and I pretended to take an emergency phone call. Because either a) I have enough friends for whom I don't have enough time, or b) I am a terrible person. Take your pick!

I mean, they were great and all, but I wanted to get back to my regular life. On the last day one of the assistant district attorneys informed us that the grand jurors always went out on the last night, and invited their favorite ADAs. (You meet a ton of them.) (Yes, you have favorites.) I suspect this was a ploy designed to get them free drinks, and anyway the last thing I wanted to do was go out. The first thing I wanted to get the hell out of there. When we were all officially released I could not tear ass from the building fast enough. I literally backed out of the room and if anyone had caught me I would have pretended I was going to the bathroom. Where I would have flushed, because maybe I'm not nice but I am also not an animal.

Noises you do not want to hear

Well, kids! We woke up this morning to bam-bam-BLAMPH-bump-bump-bumpity on the roof and since it was raining, I naturally thought, "Oh, dear, the roof deck furniture has taken flight again," and then Henry called from his room, "Something fell off the roof!" which seemed to confirm it, and as I wondered if we had killed anyone this time, Scott spied a MAN shimmying down a tree in our backyard. So it was not a furniture, but a person. Who leapt from a neighboring roof to ours, like he was some kind of super-villain. Good morning!

Henry was full of criticisms for the alleged criminal while Scott spoke with the police and I tried to give Henry the comfort and reassurance that he did not require.

"I bet he thought people wouldn't hear him because we'd be asleep. Well, guess what, idiot, there's school."
"The important thing to remember is, look how fast the police showed up!"
"Do you remember school? I bet not."
"And let's remember, he was just running away from something, he wasn't trying to get in."
"Plus, duh, we have windows! And we could look right outside and see him right there! Hello!"
"We're all safe, honey. You may now hug me."

At any rate, the police officers wandered around the backyard and trudged up to the roof and peered up at the trees as if they would yield clues, and then they left and I have no idea what happened. I hope this man was only engaged in some wacky adultery hijinks and not fleeing from a crime scene, and I bet that's not the case so I'm just going to hope no one was hurt.

AND THEN:


Okay, I was WRITING THIS VERY POST and had in fact just finished writing the word "hurt" when there was ANOTHER eruption of noise, NOT A JOYFUL NOISE AT ALL. This one was a rrrrrrrrrrrrwwwhROOOOOOMPH and it was louder than anything should be, and I thought, oh, hey, the building's coming apart. So this is a good day! Of course if a wall fell off or the roof collapsed I would have, you know, seen it (that's the advantage of having all four walls of your home within sight at all times) so after I ran in circles for a few seconds (I am excellent when an emergency strikes) I hurried to the back window, where I saw THIS:

That is a tree that fell into our yard, causing the roomph noise. This is a tree whose branches are sitting in our gutters. That is a tree that came THISCLOSE to killing us all. Okay, not really. It's amazing to me that the tree didn't come down forever ago, since it's been dead since we moved in (it's in the empty lot just behind us, the lot entirely populated by romance-minded kitty cats). It might have come down when the (alleged) ne'er-do-well was climbing it this very morning! Oh, that would have been a story.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to take a Klonopin and practice my deep breathing.

Everything, it hurts

I made a terrible mistake, which began, as it so often does, with me venturing outside. To the gym, specifically, where I made the second mistake, which was to work out with great vigor and enthusiasm. And now my body is wrecked.

My schedule went all to hell in the spring, with the book launch and subsequent tour, and ever since then I have been less than disciplined about gym-going. I know this is a problem for many of us modern peoples, with our careers and families clamoring for our love and care, but I really don't have valid excuses. I live three blocks from the gym. I work from home. My son is in school. Surely, you would think, I could cram an hour of exercise into my schedule at least a few times a week. Especially knowing how much exercise benefits my delicate moods! Not to mention my bones, which will soon have the density and strength of meringue! (Thanks, osteoporotic ancestors!)

And yet.

The need to get back into it really hit home when I was on a plane a couple of weeks ago. I lifted my suitcase to get it into the overhead bin, and I got…stuck.  I got it three-quarters of the way toward the overhead bin and there was no way my arms would lift it any higher.  I just stood there, frozen, my suitcase in mid-air, desperately commanding my arms to continue upward but they WOULD NOT GO, until a nice fellow passenger helped me out. A beefy man took pity on me. I was furious. Why, I had lifted suitcases MUCH HEAVIER than this one, back in the day! The day being only a few months previous! I bet once upon a time I could lift that young man right over my head, by gum!

Anyway, I've been TRYING, you guys, trying so hard, to get back into the routine. And so Wednesday I went for the second time this week, and until Wednesday I'd been going fairly easy on myself because I knew I was out of practice. I don't know what shifted inside me, this Wednesday.  I went a little nuts.

Weight-lifting dramatically lifts my mood while I'm hoisting away. I was having this fantastic endorphin rush, the kind I hadn't had in a long time--I missed it so!--and I went into automatic and chose weights I had been using when I was lifting all the time. I was holding my usual weights while LUNGING! And SQUATTING! And then I did some chest presses and inverted rows and etc.! In my enthusiasm I forgot that I was now a wasted spindly shell of what I had once been!

I woke up yesterday fairly sore, nothing remarkable, but as the day wore on, every time I stood up I felt even more sore, and then even more, and today I am WORSE. Every time I get up I want to cry.  Walking down the stairs is the worst thing ever. What monster invented stairs?

As uncomfortable as I am, I refuse to relive what happened yesterday when I was sitting on the toilet and realized there was no way in hell I could stand. Just no way. I decided to slide myself off the toilet onto the floor, and fortunately we have a full-length mirror in the bathroom so I got to watch my pathetic descent onto the tile, with my pants bunched up around my knees. That tile was cold. It took a while to shimmy my pants back up. There may have been some whimpering. I will never let that happen again. I don't care if my thighs rupture when I get up. I WILL HAVE MY DIGNITY.

Sorry about that west nile virus, Brooklyn

For a few weeks we've been having a mosquito problem in our apartment, which is not something one generally expects in mid-November, but thanks to climate change, every season is now an adventure in the unexpected!

Still, though, this many mosquitoes in one apartment points to a problem … somewhere. Somewhere nearby. We tried to get to the bottom of this problem by scratching our wounds and bitching about it. Then one night, as Scott and I were preparing for sleep (translation: reading erotic poetry aloud to one another; flossing--erotically) the cat jumped on the bed and stared at the ceiling. I assumed, as one does, that there were ghosts hovering up there--because everyone knows cats can see ghosts and it drives them crazy that they can't pounce on 'em--but I looked up and instead of glimpsing a floaty ancestor I saw approximately 1 billion mosquitoes.

As you can imagine, this was not a sight one wishes to see before one drops off to sleep.

Now that I'm picturing the scene a little more vividly in my mind's eye, it was maybe less like 1 billion and more like twelve. Even so, one does not like to share one's bedroom with more mosquitoes than zero. Much less A DOZEN WAITING UP THERE FOR YOU TO DOZE OFF SO THEY CAN DRAIN YOU OF YOUR DELICIOUS BLOOD.

Scott and I immediately leapt up and murdered each of the mosquitoes, or maybe if you want to be accurate Scott murdered them while I helpfully pointed out the stragglers and shouted, "Kill them! Kill them ALL!" Or, okay, maybe I just shuddered and rocked back and forth. At any rate, I made sure to keep out of his way until his spree was complete.

He felled all the mosquitoes that were waiting above us, but there were more. As soon as I began dropping off to sleep that night and for several nights after, I was treated to a series of those horrible ear-fly-bys, like they were saying, "Guess what, asshole."

We were baffled. Where were these mosquitoes coming from? What was going on? And then my brilliant husband, oh, he realized. It was a few nights later when he was awakened to another mosquito-party--this time going on on his body--and that's when it hit him: the roof deck. Where we had planters. And there had been rain. And we had not gone up there, because it was cold, and who goes up to a roof deck when it's cold? Smart people do to make sure there's no standing water, that's who. Smart people who are not us. Oh no, we had created a mosquito haven up there, and it was a short distance downstairs to our place, and I have no idea how they were arriving en masse into our apartment with our windows closed but I just hope we were the main victims and that everyone on our block was not similarly afflicted.

Anyway, Scott got up, in the middle of the night, and went up there and drained every inch of standing water SO THERE TAKE THAT MOSQUITOES HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAaa. HA. BAM. WE WIN.

Then we were still under attack, kind of a lot, actually, for another couple of weeks, and it finally occurred to us that the big giant planter up on the roof, the one that had plenty of soil in it, not water, so it didn't need to be drained, maybe was the problem? And come to think of it was kind of muddy? And maybe mosquitoes like mud? (Spoiler alert: THEY DO.)

Oh, I'll tell you, we are always learning! So it only took us 14 days or so to figure that out. We're really doing quite well for ourselves. This is why we're better off not owning a home. You're welcome, New Jersey.