68 Steps

Blog posting is a peculiar business. One month you post every day, come hell or high water; the next, you flop your little raft into the undertow of the holiday season, and you ride the rapids for a bit, and you look up and it's been two weeks since you posted anything. So let's do the only natural, human thing and cast the blame elsewhere. My finger is pointed at the RetardoCats*, who have been trying to catch that mouse/arrow thing as it flits across the computer screen for months yet are certain that TODAY is the day they will catch and devour it, tastily. And every so often, while standing on the keyboard, they will depress the hidden shut-down button that some design genius thought might be useful, and everything I've worked on will be sucked into the ether.

* All the more proof that cats cannot be superheroes. Because crime would run rampant during the 14 or so daily hours of naptime, and cornered villains would get away scot free merely by throwing a few jingle balls down the far alley.

Anyway. If you're still out there, I'm still in here, deciding that the best way to deal with holiday stress is incrementally. Bird by bird, hour by hour, step by step. I got the idea when our elevator--which, rumor has it, was assembled by gracile australopithecines and has been reliably unreliable for a few years now--finally succumbed to the surgeon's knife. The building's new owner has decided it's probably not the best idea to have some grunt put a fresh load of duct tape on the gears every two weeks, so the entire motor assembly has been removed, disassembled, and donated to the Museum of Natural History's anthropological wing.

We were promised a working elevator yesterday, yet still we trudge up those stairwells with our bundles. I'll piggyback the boys if I'm feeling Herculean enough, but most of the time we turn the ascent into a singing/counting game. Very soon other parents will be wondering why our boys have legs like a speed skater's, and why TwoBert thinks the list of Knowable Integers ends at 68.

The other news is that my dad now has a bionic hip, but thanks to a blood clot in his thigh he will spend most of his 71st birthday this weekend in bed. He's on blood thinners now, and the swelling is almost gone. He can still get around, but oh so gingerly.

For the past two weeks, then, what is normally mundane has become an effort. So we allot the extra time and the extra psychic space, and the job moves along, slowly but surely, until the top of the stairs is in sight.

Comments

[Pretentious]

Dude, kitties sleep more than 14 hours a day.

[HeyJoe]

Totally had to Google gracile australopithecines.

Best to your dad. Hope he recovers swiftly.

[Jugi]

As you know, we went through a similar elevator reconstruction this year, and while it was not worth the wait, we at least had a freight elevator and someone to run it for us. To the point where you'd trudge in at 2am and wake up the super's wife because seven flights is too much to ask when you're wasted, and dammit, we're PAYIN' for this shit! Anyway, we got our new Darth Vator a couple weeks ago, and it's as silent and sleek as can be. So take heart. This too shall pass.

My best to Dad.

[Sheryl]

Not having to depend on the elevator is the only good thing about living on the first floor.

The big, bad thing is, of course, having drunk college students knock on your door in the middle of the night because the can't remember where they live and they can't seem to find the stairwells or elevators. Or maybe they can't work them properly.

Why yes, I do live right outside the campus of a major university (that also regularly makes top ten lists of "party schools"). What gave it away?