going bonkers

life, right now, is basically madness. not really a bad madness—i mean, it’s for a good cause. it’s just…a lot. and it’s taking its toll on some of us.

my parents, for example, spent all of last Friday celebrating their 39^th wedding anniversary only to realize, when they opened my card that evening, that it was actually their 38^th anniversary. on Sunday night, after a fabulous dinner of homemade spaghetti and meatballs, my father declined when i offered to refill his wine glass with chianti. i refilled mine and settled in for Game 3 of the ALDS. about three innings in, i saw my dad take a leisurely sip from my glass and set it back down on the end table. “What is this,” i said, “church?” he burst out laughing, having completely forgotten that he’d turned down a second glass just thirty minutes earlier.

and me. i decided to wear a skirt to our third dance lesson Tuesday night in the hopes that i’d look or at least feel more graceful than I did in jeans and sneakers. only i opted for a plaid wool skirt that i swear was four inches longer last fall than it is this fall. i got dressed that morning in a rush and convinced myself that not only was the skirt a reasonable length for a woman my age, but also that wearing fishnets rather than opaque tights was a good idea.

fast-forward to our lesson that night. Leslie tells us we should learn the lift, even if we decide not to do it. the lift involves Michael spinning me around in his arms, holding me as if he were carrying me over the threshold. the skirt is not long enough to be caught and secured by both of his arms, so the hem of it flapped and flew in the breeze created by the spin. granted, there were only three of us in the studio but the ample view of my tush (oh, yes—i paired the fishnets not with boy shorts or even granny panties, but with what my mother wryly calls a “slingshot”) every time we did the lift—a dozen times, to my recollection—was just oh so humbling.

anyway. we’re all bonkers and i fear it will only get more intense as the days continue to tick down. Despite my nearly constant utter exhaustion, I get myself up out of bed five or six mornings a week at six am and I go to the gym.

this may sound crazy but that fifteen minute walk, when it’s still dark as night (and, lately, frigid as all hell) along the nearly deserted sidewalks—those are some of my happiest moments of the day. i feel at peace as I pass the café on the corner where workers have just begun to brew the coffee, when I catch a whiff of the everything bagels in the oven at Brooklyn Bread, when i watch a few poor souls in their business suits trudging to the F train. every morning the same guy runs past me on the opposite side of the street, dressed in his interesting garb (always shorts layered over spandex pants with a knit cap with earflaps and tassels on his head) and with a huge pack strapped to his back. i make up a different story about him each day—he’s training to run across the country a la Forrest Gump; he’s preparing for a serious trek up Mount Kilimanjaro; he’s especially attached to his possessions and can’t leave home, even for a jog, without them.

anyway, i love being up and out at that hour. my brain is still compartmentalized and i can focus just on getting to the gym and on my workout and on getting back to the apartment with a somewhat reasonable amount of time left to get ready for work.

later in the day my head will swirl and chug and spew smoke and lava as work responsibilities and wedding to-dos twist and tangle with worries about my finances, about seeing my friends, about the big, tragically unorganized tub of fall clothes in the spare room waiting to be sorted out and put away, about finding time to catch up on Grey’s, about my Gram, about the dust accumulating on all surfaces in the apartment, until finally i crawl into bed and set my alarm for six am.

mb