circle of life

last weekend, we drove down to NYC for some family stuff. while we went down for a reception for my cousin erik and his new wife ali, the more important thing to do was visit my grandfather.

over the summer, my grandparents, who still live in their house in brooklyn, had a fire in the basement. they went to live with my aunt and uncle for a few weeks while the house was worked on, but it was very jarring for them, especially my grandfather. he is 97 and not used to change, much less leaving the house for long periods of time. then, a few weeks after they moved back home, my grandfather broke his hip.

since then, he has been in and out of the hospital and rehab. he is not what could be termed a model patient--he doesn't want to eat, he doesn't want to do the physical or occupational therapy. he's starting to distrust the doctors and his family.

i went with my sister, mother, and grandmother last saturday to the rehab facility to visit him. he was sitting in a wheelchair eating lunch when we arrived. he had lost a lot of weight, which is not great since he was very thin to begin with. my sister, who is a speech pathologist, took over feeding him because he was chewing his food but not swallowing it. she kept advising the nurse on how to feed him and the kinds of foods to feed him. then, we went down the hall to the PT and OT room and tried to get him to stand up and then to walk. he wasn't having any of it. we did play a little game of catch but the more important thing would be for him to walk if he wants to leave the rehab facility.

what struck me while i was there was how similar my grandfather had become to asher. i know it's such a cliche to say that, as people age, they become more infantile, but it was very true in this case. my father's father died when i was a year old and my father's mother died nearly 20 years ago and i don't honestly remember much about it. there was a lot going on at that time in my life. this is all to say that i haven't seen much of the bad side of aging. up until his fall, my grandfather seemed to be doing all right, and my grandmother is doing really well.

we feed asher in the same way that sarah was feeding my grandfather--slowly, patiently, and with small bites, making sure that he swallows. we talk to him in the same patient tones, expressing happiness and disappointment with our voices and facial expressions. the big difference, of course, is that asher is six months old and is getting better at doing these things whereas my grandfather is not.

earlier this week, my mother called to tell me that her father was going back to the hospital. they suspected more bleeding, maybe an infection. this time, he went to the hospital where my father works so that it will be easier for someone to visit with him. at least when we went to see him last weekend, he knew who we all were. we showed him some photos of asher on my mother's camera, and he enjoyed them.

tweet tweet?

so i just signed up for twitter. we'll see how that goes.

moving tomorrow!

we are moving tomorrow! i am very excited. there are some things that i will miss about our current apartment, which is a kind of non-neighborhood that borders on so many other neighborhoods.

i'll miss the convenience of the grocery store, bank, video store, drugstore, hardware store, radio shack, dry cleaners, and post office, all underneath my building. i'll miss being able to walk to newbury street, the prudential, and the amazing cupcake place all within ten minutes.

what won't i miss? i'm glad you asked!

* the noise. there are constantly trucks loading and unloading behind our building. and, sometimes, it seems that it is someone's job to drag heavy, metal, objects across the pavement in front of the whole foods behind the building, particularly between the hours of 11 PM and 2 AM. there are also sirens constantly. and i will not miss the stupid berklee students who must think that they are constantly auditioning for a performance of "rent" or something. i don't want to hear you playing your saxophone and blowing into your harmonica in the middle of the night.

* the smelly lady on the second floor of our building who is in a wheelchair and who is mean.

* the strange lady spotted out and about in the streets behind our building who is always carrying a small hand mirror, holding it in front of her so that she can see what's going on behind her and, presumably, who might be following her. weird!

* the extreme draftiness of our windows in the winter.

* the whine of our neighbor's pipes when they take showers.

* the family down the hall who let their daughters play naked in the hallway, although that has kind of tapered off over the past few months. maybe there were too many complaints or maybe they realized it wasn't appropriate for their seven-year-old to be running through the halls sans clothing.

* the useless air conditioning in our apartment.

* RCN.

no sleep till brookline

we are moving to brookline at the end of the month. it's a very nice two bedroom apartment with a much larger kitchen, two bathrooms, two balconies, and a hook-up for a washer and a dryer in the apartment. there are lots of closets (linen closet!) and a pantry (pantry!). we found the building because our former neighbors here moved to this new building in april. they had a baby in july and we are hoping to share a nanny with them in november.

it is all very exciting, although a little stressful because A) moving is always stressful and B) we need to find someone to take over our lease. if you know someone who wants to move into a really nice one bedroom apartment in a great location in boston, leave me a message! i'll get in touch!

what is perhaps the most exciting is that asher will have his own room! we have been doing some sleep training with him because he is four months old, weighs close to twenty pounds, and eats (drinks?) at least 30 oz. every day. he does not need to eat during the night any longer and, after a few nights of crying it out, he has been able to get himself back to sleep. why, just this morning i watched him pick up his binky from the crib and put it in his mouth, all by himself! our work is done!

however, his crib is still in our bedroom until we move. so when asher wakes up at 3 or 4 AM, as he is wont to do, and starts snuffling around to get himself back to sleep, i wake up and usually alex wakes up and then usually alex goes out to sleep on the couch in the living room for another hour or two while i lie in the bed with a pillow over my head, trying to block out the snuffling.

hence the title of this posting. there really will be no sleep till brookline. then we can rock the party eight days a week.

the beastie boys :: no sleep till brooklyn

royal pains: a review

i started watching USA's new television series royal pains when it first aired earlier this summer. i was intrigued because i love campbell scott.

the show is about a NYC ER doctor, hank, who loses his job because he decides to treat a kid from his pick-up basketball game over one of the hospital's founders--he believes that the founder is doing fine--but then, the founder of the hospital dies. he goes into a tailspin, his fiancee leaves him, and he mopes around brooklyn until his younger brother, evan, drags him out to the hamptons for some R&R. while there, they sneak into a house party and hank ends up saving some girl's life, as is wont to happen to TV doctors. the owner of the house, boris (campbell scott, with graying hair and a terrible german accent, but still awesome), offers hank his guest house if he, hank, wants to stay in the hamptons and become a concierge doctor.

hank and his brother, evan, who is a CPA, set up shop, hiring a PA named divya, and tending to the rich of the hamptons...while hank also tends to the poor. he meets this woman jill, who is a hospital administrator at the local hospital, and they start to date, kind of.

here's the thing: everything related to hank and jill is terminally boring. everything related to hank and the cases he treats is also extremely boring. campbell scott was only in a handful of episodes, though he was great in all of them. why did i continue to watch the show? because paulo constanzo, who plays evan, is hilarious. he made the show worth watching. also, his interactions with divya were great--she is a very good actress, too. i also liked that she's a PA because my brother is a PA. i swear that every episode had a scene that was like a public service announcement for the job of physician's assistant.

anyway, i highly recommend catching this in reruns if you missed it the first time. there won't be new episodes till next year, probably not till next summer, and i'm okay with that. it's a fun, summer show. i'm ready for my fall TV to kick in. greek starts on monday!

coincidence?

does barry manilow know you raid his wardrobe?

so john hughes died on thursday. the last of his movies that i saw was the unfortunate career opportunities. i have, of course, seen much of his earlier work and committed much of it to memory. he introduced me to james spader, who i love, and, via the soundtrack to pretty in pink, echo and the bunnymen, the smiths, and new order.

the first of his movies that we saw (by "we," i mean my sister and i) was definitely sixteen candles. my parents rented it for us when they went out to dinner--i think that they had to rent a VCR, too, that's how long ago this was--and my brother was babysitting and, in the first five minutes, there was some nudity and cursing and they were like, no way are you watching this. and of course josh let us watch it.

in health class in seventh grade, they showed us an edited-for-TV version of the breakfast club. flip you! using the breakfast club as a metaphor for other forced social encounters works very well. you know that, for better or for worse, come monday morning, they aren't going to be friends.

some have said that, for americans, high school can be the defining experience of our lives, and that, for many of us, we just repeat it over and over again. was college like high school? yes, but with alcohol and the pretense of being different from high school. can jobs be like high school? yes, but with a salary and the pretense of being different from high school. there are cliques everywhere. there are mean girls everywhere. there are people who get ahead without anything to recommend them everywhere. and, hopefully, there are times when you'll find your people, the people who appreciate echo and the bunnymen or whatever your thing is.