What our upstairs neighbor might be doing

It's not easy, having your feet removed and replaced with anvils. But darn it, I'm going to find a way to get by. Now to practice my walking. No—JUMPING. That's the spirit, me!

If only the clog dancing studio hadn't burned to the ground. I suppose we'll have to use my living room. My neighbors will understand once they find out how much money our performance will raise for the third-world orphans.

MY BOOKCASE IS TRYING TO KILL ME NOT AGAIN OH BOOKCASE LEAVE ME BE OH GAAAAAH

This new therapist wants me to do trust falls all by myself, because if I can't trust myself, he says, who can I trust? He's the expert, I guess. I wish I could at least do them on my mattress. Or some pillows. Ow.

I AM GOING TO BAKE COOKIES FOR THE NEW NEIGHBORS! I AM SO EXCITED TO MEET THEM! I CAN'T STOP JUMPING! AND FALLING! AND LEAPING FROM THE TOPS OF THINGS!

You know, I think I'll hammer some sound-absorbing materials to my floors. So that I don't bother anyone else in the building. I know some people would say, wait until morning, get some rest. But there's no rest for the thoughtful. I'll hammer until 3 a.m. if I have to. Just hammer and hammer.

Adjusting

"I don't ever want to go outside again," he yells at me. It's a gorgeous day, and we've got a playground within shouting distance of our building. He can hear the kids laughing and screaming out there. All those kids, friends with each other, none of them friends with him. I know it seems that way. "We've got to get out there if we want to meet new people," I insist.

At the playground, he hands me a light saber. "Why don't we find another kid to play with?" I suggest. Mommy is old, and tired of playing Star Wars. The place is crawling with kids, after all. Many of whom are eyeing our light sabers with great interest.

Henry shakes his head. "I only play with my family," he insists. But he's watching an older boy, a charismatic type being chased by a young girl, possibly his sister. I can see the mechanisms whirring. Willing to play with younger kids. Likes to be chased. I like to chase. "I'm going to ask him to play," he whispers to me, but just as he approaches, the kid takes off abruptly with his dad. It looks to me like they're just taking a restroom break, but even after they return a few minutes later, Henry never tries again.

It's hard to make friends. You want to rush things. In a way, I'm jealous of Henry. I miss the days when you met someone and because you both liked the same things (Barbie? Swings? Creative nonfiction?) you were instant friends. All it will take for him to make a playground friend is eye contact with one kid, just one, someone to run around with. But he keeps his eyes on me. I want to tell him he doesn't know how easy he has it. As if that would work.

So I take matters into my own hands. There's a boy who seems to be around Henry's age playing near us. "Are those Ben-10 sneakers?" I inquire, and the boy nods and starts to list his favorite Ben-10 characters. Henry rolls his eyes violently. "I already know about that," he says, and takes off down the slide. The boy and I watch him, and we shrug at each other. Kids. What can you do. Meanwhile, Henry is eyeing a group of boys playing ball with each other. Boys who are way too busy doing their thing to notice the straggler in their midst. Oh, Henry. But of course I do the same thing. Why does this person want to be my friend so badly? Is there something wrong with her? On the other hand, what's that group of cool-looking parents over there, and how can I talk to them? I can't. God, I'm lame.

It's hard. I know it will get easier. But I still hate this part.

Apologies in advance

I am sure that posting will be light for the next few weeks because of the move. The imminent move. The frighteningly imminent move.

We need to be out of here by March 1, which means that we need to, uh, pack. Pack, and more importantly, discard whatever we're not taking with us, which is a lot. We've spent the last three years filling up this four-bedroom, two-floor-plus basement house, and we're somehow going to have to pare down our belongings to fit a 900-square-foot apartment. I don't really know how this feat is going to be accomplished, but I suspect several charities are going to get some very large bags full of our belongings, and several more of our neighbors will be bequeathed whatever's too big to stuff into bags.

Why is the idea of tossing away everything so exhilarating? Or is it just me? I like to buy crap just as much as the next consumer, and yet the idea of setting everything out on the curb fills me with glee. We have very few items that I'd feel sad about losing. I'm afraid that once I start shedding belongings I won't be able to stop. I'm going to be in the new place and realize that I gave away all my pants.

The new place! We have a new place! So, uh, I hope this house closing goes smoothly, because otherwise, whoops. We're renting in the heart of Park Slope, and I will officially be that most loathed of creatures—the Park Slope Mom. I intend to start pushing around a double-wide stroller, just for the hell of it. While walking slowly. And drinking a latte. And shouting at my imaginary daughter Finona not to run into traffic.

BALLOONS.

He's balloons-on-his-feet nuts!
Originally uploaded by finslippy.

A few years ago, Scott and I went with our friend Mike to see a couple of our other friends in a play. It was in one of those theatres that are so far Off-Broadway they’re practically in the East River. We were late, so we ran in, not even stopping to grab programs, and sat down in the audience. The lights went down. And then they went up.

On the stage were several foppish dandies mincing about. “What’s this play about, again?” I asked Scott, who shrugged. They were wearing satin knickers and powdered wigs. We were led to understand that one of them was Benjamin Franklin. “Where are our friends?” I hissed at Scott, who looked as baffled as I was. The people on the stage were in France, which we knew because they said things like “Here we are in France.”* One of them spoke of the Montgolfier brothers, or maybe one of them was a Montgolfier? “The hot-air balloon,” he declared, scratching at his hosiery, “will be the invention of this century! Nay, of any century!”* It went on like this for some time. None of our friends were on the stage. I looked around us at the five or six other people in the audience. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Then I caught sight of someone’s program. On the cover was the word “BALLOON.”

I can’t remember the name of the play our friends were in, but it was not “BALLOON.”

“Oh my god,” I told my husband, “we’re in the wrong theater.”

“Oh no,” he said. “Oh no oh no.” He whispered to Mike. Mike put his head in his hands. We looked at each other. We knew we couldn't laugh. There were only eight of us in the audience. The poor actors would see us laughing, and the poor actors did not deserve that.

Unfortunately, the one Monty Python sketch I know is “The Montgolfier Brothers in Love”, and in fact this is the only sketch whose lines Mike and I have recited to each other lo these many years (“Every time you sing a song, it is in some way obliquely connected with balloons ... everything you eat has to have ‘balloon’ incorporated in the title ... your dogs are all called ‘balloon-o’ ... you tie balloons to your ankles in the evenings”), and there we were in this tiny theater with the Montgolfier brothers right in front of us, preening as Benjamin Franklin held forth on the fall of Versailles. It was torture. Every time one of them boomed, "BALLOON!" I was sure I would lose it. We couldn’t just walk out (think of those poor actors!). And we didn’t know if there was an intermission.**

None of this is in any way related to the party our friends had for us last weekend, except that there were many balloons, although not the hot-air kind. We worried that Henry wouldn’t be entertained enough at the party, but the brilliant Emily, party co-organizer and the best babysitter/girlfriend Henry will ever have, borrowed Star Wars guys from a friend and then stuffed her home with helium balloons. Henry loved the Star Wars guys, natch, but then someone tied balloons to his ankles and all at once he was beside himself with joy. He was hopping and twirling and laughing maniacally as balloons bopped him in the face.

I felt kind of the same way, except without the balloons.

We could not have better friends.

(*Dialogue invented for illustrative purposes.)
(**There was. And we made a run for it.)