Domestic Psychology

New York randomness

// November 1st, 2011 // No Comments » // people, travel

New York could have saved itself a lot of money by not installing crossing lights. No New Yorker heeds those lights. They cross by some kind of intuition. I assimilated and crossed without hesitation when there was no traffic, but I was less confident when there were moving cars. My solution was to follow the lead of the person wearing skinny jeans. Regardless of what they are wearing or their age, never follow two people holding hands. People holding hands in New York are in a love haze and they will walk for miles to get nowhere.

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“Are those old-fashioned water containers on rooftops in case of fire?”
“I don’t know.”
“What embassy is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is that sculpture?”
“I don’t know.”
“For someone who claims to be a New Yorker, you don’t know a lot.”

- – - – - – -

On the other hand, I paused to take a picture of one of the amazing window displays in the city and when I turned back, Sarah was in a group debating subway routes.

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Having witnessed the functional purpose of the scarves that New Yorkers wear as fashion accessories, I wonder how they deal with smells and germs on subways during warm weather.

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Metropolitan Museum of Art > Frick > MoMa

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Not knowing Spanish in New York felt rude and inconsiderate. I’m sorry.

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Small child reading ad on the side of a bus: “Beavis and Butthead.”
Nanny: “Just say Beavis.”
Child: “That’s not what it says.”
Nanny: “That is ALL you will say.”

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Do people in New York not need the rare and endangered public bathroom because they walk off all fluids or are they perpetually dehydrated?”

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OH in crowd watching Naked Cowboy: “I think he’s gay.”

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“One of the Beatles died there. Why are you crying?”

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If I lived in New York, I would be one of the clipboard people who answer questions in Central Park. I could never get tired of Central Park.

“like a scene from Guys & Dolls”

// November 1st, 2011 // No Comments » // flickr, travel

Saturday in New York

// October 30th, 2011 // No Comments » // flickr, travel

Falling Apart

// October 30th, 2011 // No Comments » // health, me, travel

I have a trick knee. Sometimes, without warning, it just stops doing what I want it to do, as though a loose wire inside has disconnected the power. As quickly as it stops working, it starts back up again. Most of the time, the power returns in time to correct and instead of a fall, I do a funny skip-hop that the children always notice. Every so often, the correction fails me and I fall down… on my trick knee.

My first day in New York, my knee decided to play a trick on me as I walked up one of the city’s trillions of staircases. I corrected poorly and fell down. “How do you fall UP a flight of stairs, mom?”

I went to bed that night sore, but awoke to a knee that screamed at me with every step I took. Just to be extra tricky, my knee completely refused to walk down steps, while awkwardly cooperating with going uphill.

With my knee giggling as it performed some kind of comedy routine that I did not find funny, I went on a grueling walk until you drop tour of New York. The blisters that I could feel on my feet thoughtfully distracted me from my knee. Eventually, girl teen made me trade shoes with her. She marched all over the city in my tiny soled Converse while her super soft New Balance sneakers felt so good that I didn’t even notice the blisters forming between my toes.

The shoe change was helpful, but it didn’t make my knee any happier. I developed my own Ratso Rizzo limp-walk to avoid the worst knee movements. Girl teen stared blank faced as I tried to explain the cultural significance of Ratso Rizzo while we stood in the middle of a traffic jam of yellow, beeping cars and shiny, silent limos. My soul was bruised at the thought of her eventual assimilation by the city and loss of delight at the beauty in the everyday.

The limp made fresh new blisters on my feet in places I didn’t know that feet could get blisters. Lifting and throwing my trick knee out of a window I was climbing out of caused my weight to shift on a metal window frame resulting in technicolor bruises on my thigh and ample posterior. On the last day of my New York visit, I went from one place to sit and people watch to another place to sit and people watch. When my abused by five children bladder forced me to seek out one of the city’s elusive bathrooms, I seriously considered remaining seated in the tiny stall and doing a photo essay of bathroom graffiti.

My first two days home in Knoxville, I wore my house cleaning clothes and slippers, although there was almost no cleaning done. I know that the correct response to my aches would have been to continue walking several miles daily. Instead, I chose to avoid additional pain and slump back to my normal, amorphic blobbiness. If I ever get to visit New York again, I will be buying whatever shoes our outdoor outfitters sell to long distance marathon athletes and mountain climbers

or I could simply act my age.

Central Park

// February 4th, 2011 // No Comments » // flickr, travel

tunneling into New York

// February 3rd, 2011 // No Comments » // flickr, travel

getting from point a to point b

// November 12th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // children, Doug, me, travel

Let’s be completely honest. We drive to get anywhere. Sure, the teens might walk for ice cream once in a blue moon and the children roam the cove heavily, but anytime we need to go somewhere or do something, there is a car involved. Once we parked the car in the airport garage, the rules changed.

Airplanes –
The very first time the plane left the ground, the children were glued to the window with giant smiles on their faces while I clawed the arm rest. The noise that the landing gear makes when raised and lowered is one of the most unnerving things I have ever heard. If I accidentally let out a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty scream when the wheels ka-chunked in or out of the plane, Doug giggled like a preteen girl. The children were oblivious. After the initial takeoff, they acted like flying was something they do every day. They behaved exactly like they do in the car. They played and chatted. Doug went one step beyond chatting. He got to know every single person anywhere near him on the plane and they talked the entire flight. We are terrible at going through security without creating a scene, but we are great at riding on the airplane. Wait. My husband and children are great on planes. I’m entertainment for the other passengers.

Taxis -
This should be just like riding in a car. It isn’t. There are no built in 5-point harnesses for the smallest children. The children don’t understand why the driver doesn’t want to chat and Evan has the same social disorder as his father. They both imitate accents when they are near them. While Doug quickly realizes what he is doing and stops, Evan ups the ante by making up words. Friends tolerate this behavior. Based on the way the hair on his arms was standing up, our taxi driver was not amused. He ignored my questioning his route instead of pulling out his phone to prove me wrong like Doug would do. When he dumped us and our mountain of luggage two blocks from our destination in total darkness in DC’s Columbia Heights, I decided I don’t like taxis.

Walking -
This seems like it should be the problem-free way to get from here to there. It isn’t. First of all, there is my complete lack of a sense of direction that results in people talking me there all the time. “I can see you. Walk to the end and turn left. No! Your other left!” Besides feeling perpetually lost, by the second day in DC, my feet hurt like they have never hurt before. While the children climbed retaining walls, balanced on curbs and picked up every single piece of trash in the gutter, I hobbled after them as if I was their great-grandmother. The appearance of a crosswalk seemed to be some secret trigger for the children to walk backwards or hop on one foot or twirl with their eyes closed. The crosswalk timer was apparently amused by these dangerous street games and it responded by randomly jumping from 50 to 20 or even 10. I was fairly confident that a cabhole ( © Lucy Jilka, 2010) was going to seriously injure my family for our inability to walk the tempo of the city.

Metro –
I thought the airplane would be the highlight of travel for my children, but I was wrong. My children loooved the Metro (even though they called it the subway). They could have spent the entire day riding the Metro and grinning like Cheshire cats. The girl teen loved the Metro too. She loved that she could go anywhere she wanted to go without her goofy family in tow. If I had anything resembling a signal from AT&T on the metro, I could have sat there and people watched for hours. There were people on the Metro wearing shoes that cost a mortgage payment standing beside people wearing the only shoes they own. Poor Doug had an endless array of problems with the Metro. He got to know the Metro employee with the Samuel Jackson personality really well. “I’m going to write on this ticket, ‘let the man who threw away perfectly good Metro tickets change stations’.” My only problem with the Metro was that traveling underground with no sense of direction is completely disorienting. Evan would like it if they added bathrooms to the trains.

adventures in security theater – part 2

// November 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // people, travel

The Boy Scout incident -
Every time we walked in a Smithsonian building, we walked through the metal detectors. After the first time, we did not take it seriously. I didn’t finish my mini-wine at lunch in the museum cafeteria and stuck it in Doug’s pocket. Not the same pocket as the pocket knives though. We went to another museum and stomped through the metal detector while a group of 11-year-olds wearing their Boy Scout uniforms had each and every fanny pack and museum gift shop bag searched by security. Boy Scouts should team up with SeV so they can spend more time touring and less time with security.

The annoying parents incident –
The Metro ride from Columbia Heights to the airport was exactly the right length for the youngest members of our group to really need a potty break. Being unfamiliar with the DC airport, we made it all the way to security before locating a restroom. It was clearly visible on the OTHER side of the security area. A countdown clock began ticking in my head and I kicked my shoes off instead of unlacing them as I tried to race through security before we had a laundry emergency.

We stepped up to the TSA agent and Doug put on his brakes. “You’re not going to let the children go through the backscatter machine are you?” “I don’t care. We need to get done here.” “Well, I think it’s a bad idea for the children, but we can do it.” “Don’t care. Don’t care. We need to move forward.” This comedy routine continued for several minutes before the TSA agent finally spoke up. “Sir, we don’t use backscatter technology at this checkpoint.” As I shoved the children through the metal detector, the TSA agent who remained silent for too long, turned toward another TSA employee. “Man, I got arrested and they gave me a choice between prison and TSA. Some days I really think I made the wrong choice.”

The smart phone incident –
The last leg of our flight back to Knoxville was after the youngest children’s bedtime. We were in shark infested behavior water. When Evan is over-tired, he’s exactly like that drunk roommate you had in college. I knew he would nod off once the plane took off, so, of course, the plane took forever to get going. The man in front of us demanded a seat change just before boarding the plane. “I need extra leg room to work.” We stood in line with the world’s most over-tired child. We made it to the plane and a woman with dementia was requiring the assistance of a dozen employees to get her settled. We stood in the freezing cold gap between the tunnel and the door to the plane with the already mentioned sleepy child. The man who waited until he was boarding the plane to demand a seat change found someone else in his last minute seat and he had a mini-tantrum. “Someone’s in my seat. I need a stewardess.” Someone was in our seat and we needed seats grouped together, so we stood there waiting for him to move while he just sat there and stared at us. Finally, Doug convinced him to scoot over one seat. We sat down.

The stewardess asked that electronics be turned off until we were safely in the air. This was Evan’s cue to begin. “Can I have the iPad?” “Not yet.” “Can I have your phone?” “Not yet.” “Can I have your iPad?” Lather. Rinse. Repeat. “Doug, if he asks me that one more time I will scream.” “Can you wait until electronics are allowed so I can video you screaming?” I didn’t have time to give Doug the evil eye before the plane finally started moving. Seconds after that horrible noise which is the wheels ka-chunking back into the plane, Evan was asleep.

We landed and I scooped up Evan to carry off the plane. Unlike every single other time I have carried Evan while he did his imitation of jello, he was having some kind of dream that involved kicking legs, swinging arms and full torso twists. I wrestled with the sleeping child in the narrow airplane aisle for what felt like forever before the stewardess asked everyone to take their seats for a while longer. I don’t know how long we sat, but it was long enough for me to know what temper tantrum over a seat man does for a living as well as how awesome he thinks he is.

Eventually, we left the plane to a small crowd in the empty Knoxville airport buzzing about the reason for our delay. Apparently, one passenger insisted on listening to music on her smart phone the entire flight. Because she wouldn’t turn off her phone for takeoff or landing, she was arrested. Because she was persona non grata, nobody even noticed Evan’s sleeping attempts to kick other passengers in the head.

adventures in security theater – part 1

// November 7th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // people, travel

The annoyed TSA employee incident –
As I have mentioned several times, I don’t travel very often. Not because I don’t want to travel, but because the opportunities are infrequent. Being inexperienced, I try to follow directions carefully in an effort to reduce and prevent problems. Airports broadcast a looped “Don’t leave luggage unattended” warning that is followed by a “or it may be damaged by TSA” disclaimer that makes it sound like luggage without an owner gets the Mythbusters ‘blow it up’ treatment. So, I keep my hand on our bags and keep the children from getting near anyone else’s bags.

While going through security, the man in front of me stomped on through the metal detector with his bag not yet on the x-ray conveyor belt. The TSA employee snarled at me to scoot my stuff onto the conveyor. “That’s not my bag.” In my mind, touching someone’s unattended bag would cost me a trip to the TSA interrogation area and one of my personal goals in life is to avoid situations that involve groping by anyone other than my husband. The TSA employee didn’t see things that way. She started on a long, rambling mumble about “not her job” and “people making things difficult” that I was certain would end in some kind of passive aggressive punishment for me. Luckily, her aggravation with me wasn’t great enough to seek revenge. As much as I wanted to apologize and explain that I didn’t know I was allowed to touch someone else’s luggage, my self preservation instinct told me it was in my best interest to put distance between myself and the annoyed TSA employee.

The SeV incident –
The Smithsonian Museums have “enhanced security” signs everywhere, so I walked toward the metal detector and started to take off my coat and hand it to the guard. “Please keep your coat on and move through the detector.” “My coat pockets have batteries and…” “Thanks for sharing. Move along.” So, I stomped on through security wearing a coat that contained more stuff than I ever carry in my purse. Doug walked up to the detector wearing his SeV. In his pockets were pocket knives, a pair of tweezers, half-full juices and an assortment of items that would make MacGyver jump for glee. He tried to explain about some of the contents. “Holding up traffic. Move, move, move.”

The Metro incident -
Metro employees have a glass booth to protect themselves. Since all the money and credit card action takes place on the wall when you first enter the station, I’m not sure why the Metro employees need those booths. If you knock on the booth for anything at all, they don’t talk through the little opening, they leave their holding cell to solve the problem. Some people get walked to the map. Some people get walked to the ticket machine. Some people get lectured on using the turnstile. Some people, I’m not saying who, get Metro schooled on all of the above. Maybe the booth is just there so the employees have a place to store their coat. When the employees are out educating the Metro illiterate, they occasionally shout, “No drinks on the Metro.” So, the first time this happened, we gulped down our drinks before boarding the train. Once seated, we noticed that more than half the people on the train had a water bottle or Starbucks cup.

On Saturday, we . . .

// November 4th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // flickr, people, travel