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.

I sat on the museum steps and watched people. Hordes of uniformed school girls in pleated blue gingham skirts skipped and hopped toward the museum entrance while half a dozen Hasidic teen boys had an animated conversation about something on a piece of paper they seemed to be sharing. Two women in burkas scurried down the sidewalk silently while three Puerto Rican nannies had what sounded like three concurrent monologues as their stroller restrained charges slept. Across the street, two men in dark suits stood silently, waiting for something or someone. A woman walked down the street, screaming nonsense at each person she passed while everyone around her avoided the eye contact that would make them the long term target of whatever demon was upsetting her so much.

New York is breathtaking in its’ simultaneous sensory overload and perfect calmness.

It’s a short list. Very short.

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Doug: “I thought Valentine’s Day was tomorrow instead of today.”

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After several years of ignoring my hair except for the occasional bang trim that I did myself, I got six inches of length chopped off my hair today. Nobody noticed.

Doug: I read about backscatter and I don’t want the children doing it. I sent Cathy that link but she never reads the links I send her. I should send it again. T never sent me that document I said I need. I need to double check the documentation on that project. I smell cookies. Did we eat dinner yet? OMG – I just figured out how to fix the problem with that piece of code. If I had a MacBook, I could fix it now. The Air sure is a sweet machine. Maybe the children should eat something before we get on the plane. Where did Cathy and the children go?

Because it brings me joy and causes them confusion, I try to do the furniture moving myself. Yesterday, the object of my obsession was our bedroom. There are several methods for moving furniture short distances. There is the put your back on a wall and shove the furniture with your hands and/or feet technique. The reverse of that is putting your hands and/or feet on the wall and shoving with your back technique. When a wall isn’t nearby, put your back on the furniture and shove while your feet act like anchors.

Sometimes, things like chairs and mirrors are easier to lift than push. When carrying heavy furniture, set it on your feet in between steps. Lift, step, step, set on feet, gasp, repeat. Pedestal beds allow you an excuse to use the normally ineffective, shin shove. The last, and probably least effective technique, is the pull which is necessary in the narrow gaps created by accidentally cramming all the furniture in the center of the room.

The next day, your entire body will hurt and you will have colorful bruises on your shins. You should moan and complain that you are coming down with the plague. “Honey? I need you to Google ‘everything hurts’ and tell me if I’m dying.” After you stub your toe on a table that you forgot has a new spot in the room, vow to spend the rest of the week on a project that can be done while sitting.

Forget this vow two days later when you decide to clean the top of the kitchen cabinets.

Last week, I sat in the car line at the elementary school and updated meetings and activities in my planner. The stillness was broken by the appearance of the carpool volunteers whose shouts and gestures control the movement of cars and children. The “move forward” signal from the volunteer jarred me into action. My left hand rolled up the car windows while my right hand started the engine. I started to pull the lever from P to D and out of nowhere, a butterfly attacked me. I’m not joking. A large butterfly was determined to land on my nose and no amount of my arms waving it away would deter it from its’ goal. Maybe it wanted to go inside my nose and eat the pollen. I like butterflies as much as the next person, but I don’t want to try driving with a butterfly on my face. Or in my nose. The carpool volunteer motioned again with an additional bit of urgency. I had one hand rolling down windows and one hand shoving at the air to defend myself against the brutal attack by the evil butterfly. As I am not an incarnation of Lakshmi, I had no free hands to actually drive the car.

With the completely frustrated carpool volunteer marching toward me and what I am certain was every driver behind me scratching their heads in confusion, the butterfly danced in the air and flitted out the car window in search of a new nose. I scooted the car forward and apologized profusely. The butterfly incident could have been a random coincidence. The butterfly incident could have been attributed to the rise in the butterfly population to counter the bee population disappearing. Pollination, or umm, life finds a way. I think I’ll consider the butterfly incident a genius marketing plan for tonight’s episode of Venture Brothers. Random failed attacks by butterflies shouldn’t cause nearly the trouble that Mooninites caused Adult Swim. Well . . . unless you try driving a car during the butterfly attack.

The disposal makes a distinctive sound when there’s something stuck inside, but the sounds aren’t distinctive enough to identify the obstruction. It could be a harmless sippy cup valve. It could be a sharp bone fragment. It could be a brown recluse. Regardless of what is in there, the only way to retrieve it is to stick your hand in past your wrist and feel around in the darkness.

I checked the switch to make sure there was no chance of the horror movie gears grinding my fingers to nubs. I held my breath and reached down until I felt metal. I began fumbling around the blades to find the source of the problem and then . . . I felt something. It was hard and sharp, but flexible. I gritted my teeth and picked up what I was sure would be a bug. As soon as my eyes made contact with it, I knew I would reflexively fling it far, far away. It still had to come out of the disposal. With every muscle in my body tensed so tight I could have touched the ceiling if anyone had walked in and startled me, I pulled out my hand. Staring anxiously, my fingers emerged and I saw black legs and they were attached to a black body and as I heard my scream escaping, I saw the plastic ring attached to the toy spider. I stopped screaming.

My heart racing, I double checked to confirm that I was holding a spider ring. Then, I looked around to see if anyone had come to rescue the screaming woman. The sounds of children playing in the next room reassured me that my stupidity had gone unnoticed. I finally exhaled. The offending ring was punished for its’ crime with banishment to the trash. I paused, picked it up again and put it in the plastic recycling. I walked to the couch to calm myself. Evan didn’t even look up from his Lego Batman game. “Why did you scream mom?”