Brianne Blogs?

For those of you who have never been here, in order to ride the subway, you have to swipe what is called a Metrocard to get through the turnstyle. Most people use a metrocard for about a month and then get a new one. Some people keep theirs for a few months and then get a new one. I have obviously achieved some sort of record as the metrocard I am currently using and refilling I have had since I got back from Maren’s wedding last July. This may not seem too impressive to you non-new yorkers, but for lisa, who can’t seem to keep one for longer than a week, it’ll wow. I tell you this because the Metrocard of my past year expires in September and I’m pretty bummed that I have to get a new one soon. Do you know the amount of trouble it has taken to keep up with this thing for a year? I have so many bags and pockets that I am constantly having to find it when I need it and have powered through and kept it this whole time and now I have to let it go? Why, MTA, why?

 I know he’s getting old and a little worn down, but as long as he’s working why can’t I keep him? I hope he enjoys his last few months of fun in the city before he retires. Maybe I’ll send him out to sea or mail him to canada to hang with maren. Or maybe he wants to retire in florida. No matter where he goes, I’ll miss him and will most likely hate the new shiny metrocard i’ll be forced to get. yuck!

Dad and I are off to the Yankee game this afternoon while mom and lisa hang in the city and then we will meet up for dinner. Photos and stories later today. To give you a preview:

When they got here last night, they were describing the flight from OKC to Cincinnatti.

dad: “there was a little turbulence”

mom: (with hand gestures and a high pitched voice) “it was stomach-churning”

you’ve seen your options, now you be the judge.

So, the folks arrive later today and commence their visit to me and then off to maren in Montreal. I have created an itinerary packed with important things for your first NYC visit and some more local things that tourists don’t usually think to do.

As always, when planning an itinerary for a visitor, I have included a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I took Amber and Kyle there when they visited. The reason I mention this is that Maren, who has logged more time in New York City over the past three years than any other non-resident, has never been. Every time she comes, we plan to go and every time she comes, we end up bumping the museum for something else. She did go to the Guggenheim (my favorite museum) but has never been to the big one and I’m just not sure where the breakdown is. So, I’m challenging the folks and myself to make sure that we don’t bump the museum this week. I’ll let you know how we did.

Also, it wouldn’t hurt to keep mom in your thoughts tomorrow as she will take her first (and not happily anticipated) ride on the subway. Good luck, Lisa, who will be with her as dad and i will be at a Yankee game. I’ll let you know how that went as well.

have you ever taken the time to read the chloraseptic directions or label? well, me neither until yesterday. and i must say, i was shocked by two things:

1. Apply to affected area, allow to sit for 15 seconds, THEN SPIT OUT!

what? you’re supposed to spit it out? who knew that? i had no idea! (and admittedly, even after reading the directions, have still not been doing this)

2. Do not use more than two days.

What? And can i take a day off and then use it for two more days? i find this confusing.

who knew that throat numbing spray was so complicated? certainly not me!

So, as my not sleeping well reaches it’s 3rd day, my mental sharpness is fading fast. While not feeling sorry for myself today over my sickness, just irritated, I nearly created a need to visit the emergency room this morning.

I was up at dawn (okay, 9 am, but to us night shift workers, that’s dawn) and decided to soothe the sore throat with a nice strawberry/banana smoothie. Okay, good so far. Then I make said smoothie uneventfully and it’s not until I start to wipe out the base of the Magic Bullet (great invention) with a paper towel while it’s still plugged in that I create a problem. Yes, this genius almost magic bulleted her own fingers. The blades started spinning and luckily didn’t hit my fingers. This is sheer luck as my reflexes are basically non-existent in this sleep deprived/benadryl haze that i’m currently living in.

So, i’m currently feeling quite lucky to be in possession of all my fingers. And hey, isn’t that a good thing? Can’t you just picture me hacking my fingers to bits in the magic bullet and then having to make my sad and lonely and bloody way to the nearest emergency room? I can picture it quite clearly. And then I’d have to call poor meghan to come and get her crippled friend. Yep, I nearly had a really great day! One can only hope this was not a sign of things to come.

After reading over yesterdays sad little blog post, I am at least able to recognize how pathetic i sounded. And while upset over the breaking of my china town cheap sunglasses, I’ve had them for 9 months. That’s like eternity in china town cheap terms. It’s really quite impressive. Luckily, mom and dad and i are headed to china town later this week and i can get some new cheap sunglasses.  

Nurses: let’s take a minute to talk about the pointlessness of a dry cough. I’d feel fine about my cough if it was accomplishing anything for me, however, a cough just for the sake of a cough is silly. I don’t get it and I don’t like it. It’s not getting anything out of my lungs or moving anything from my nose, it’s just bothering me. Is that the point? Stupid dry, non-productive cough!

Photo explanation: when maren was getting her hair done for her wedding last summer, there was a picture in a bridal book of a lady wearing her veil as we did above. so, i had maren put her veil like that and we took a picture. then, when marens dress came to our house from the cleaners, meghan and i decided to put on her veil in the same way and take pictures. thanks maren for not being pissed that we took out your clean veil and played with it!

so, i was taking out the trash saturday afternoon and noticed a shadow outside the front door of the building. odd because when i left the apartment just a few seconds earlier, it was nice outside. sudden rainstorm? large person casting a shadow? nope. they put scaffolding up over our apartment. ugh! scaffolding is one of those things that you love and hate. love it when it’s raining and you are protected from the wet. hate it all other times when it casts a shadow over your home and covers your nice brownstone with its ugliness. and i’m also mad that my parents are coming in just a few short days and they will see ugly green scaffoling covering our apartment. stupid manhattan day school construction project that will never end and is quickly becoming the bane of our existence!!!!

Today has been one of those days when you just feel sorry for yourself. Ezra gave me some sort of viral illness with fever and coughing and scratchy throat and it’s hit it’s apex today. So I woke up miserable with the worst sinus headache ever. The confusing part of this is that I have no drainage of any kind. Dry as a bone and my head feels like it’s going to explode. My plan of attack for the day is to put on my sunglasses and slowly make my way in the heat to the drugstore to get some drugs to stop the madness. You know, for nurses, meghan and I have a shocking lack of drugs in our house.

My plan gets off to a bad start immediately as i drop my iphone and it goes skidding across the floor and gets chipped. Then, I go to put my sunglasses on and they break. Right down the middle. Rough start to my day. So, I go to the drugstore and can’t find the drugs. Our usual drugstore is closing so I had to go to a different one and they hide the drugs there. It took me several long and miserable minutes to find the chloraseptic. Boo 72nd street Duane Reade! Then they only have one register open, so I have to wait in a very long line to pay for my stuff. Then I come home and take some tylenol sinus fast release capsules which are so fast release that they open a little in my mouth and I had gritty tylenol in my mouth. Yuck! Then I drink the Gatorade that i got only to discover that it’s yucky. I bought it because it was blue and looked refreshing. However, had i been thinking clearly i wouldn’t have bought it because i don’t drink blue things. It’s just a rule i have that i forgot to follow today and it bit me in the ass. Frost gatorade=not good! So, that’s been my day so far and I’m feeling crappy and sorry for myself. That’s a lot Ezra for this illness and thanks world for kicking me when I’ down. (a little overdramatic? that seems to be my way today.)

no picture today because i just don’t have the energy to search for a good one. i am the worst sick person, i really am.

As you all know, I don’t love new york in the summer because of the suffocating humidity. And with the suffocating humidity and heat comes an unfortunate side effect, the smell of baking trash. Every morning the trash goes out around the city and every morning, the heat bakes it into a not so pleasant smell. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad if you were traveling by car, but since we travel on foot, it creates a problem of when to breathe. You smell the whiff of a bad smell and then try not to breath it in, but sometimes it takes a while to pass the pile of trash and you start to get concerned about your oxygen intake. It’s not the best part of our city. And sometimes, it gets downright confusing when walking by a bad smell, as it did for me Friday morning. I smelled the bad smell, then smelled bleach, then the bad smell, then a breeze of bleach. What? Do I stop breathing or breathe in the clean scent? It was confusing. Especially because I couldn’t tell where the bleach smell was coming from. Surely not the trash, right? There was a great quote in New Yorker magazine last summer about his topic:

“Sometimes you walk by something and think it’s the worst thing you’ve smelled in your life, only to keep walking and smell something worse.”

yep, that sums it up.

While I am not currently living in Oklahoma, it makes me very happy to know that Autumn is back in the state in which she belongs. Welcome back to the great state of Oklahoma. It’s a comforting thought to know that my freind Autumn is back in the place where we lived the dream in college and (only possibly) loved a little too much our much older Microbiology professor. Oh, the memories. It just didn’t seem right for her to be in California. That’s not where Autumn belongs. And I’m glad she’s out and back home.

Amber Rae Turley!

Welcome to the world of 26. So far, it’s been pretty good. So, barring a raccoon attack in your future, I think you should have a pretty good year.

Last night Amber and I were talking about Stephen King and accidentally started talking about “It” and the horrors of Pennywise the Clown. I say accidentally becuase we are both still so scared of him to this day, nearly 2 decades after first seeing the movie. We then got to talking about how the fears we had as children, while irrational, are the ones that stick with you forever:

1. storm drains: ever since Pennywise the clown lured the boy into the gutter i have been terrified of gutters and clowns and tim curry. he played pennywise and then also played the devil in the movie “legend” and so i have been scared of him since i was a little girl. even when he’s in other movies and is a nice guy, i still think in my heart that he is bad and going to get someone, likely me. tim curry=scary!

(here is where i should post a picture of pennywise the clown, but not only would i be scared, i think amber would stop being my friend)

2. “the dingo ate my baby”: this movie where a dingo eats a baby while this family is on a camping trip that my parents let me watch when i was 5-6. it hit during that time when you thought that keeping your arms and legs inside the covers would keep you safe. i used to lie awake and need to go to the bathroom but not want to put my arms and legs out of the covers for fear of being eaten by a giant wild dog. perhaps that’s why i don’t like dogs so much.

i’m sure there are many others and i’m sure if you think about it, you’ll have some too that are stupid but nonetheless would cause you to lose sleep if say a dingo passed you on the street that day.

so, think about those things that scared you as a child and if they still do. i bet it’s the same with you all as with brianne and amber.