Unfortunately, I was no longer able to uphold the city life. It has been said that if you live in NYC for at least 7 years you can call yourself a NYer. So I now consider myself a transplanted city girl. If you like my blog, please like my page on Facebook. See link in the right sidebar.
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This morning’s commute was bad. I confess most of it was my fault.
First I overslept my alarm. I had a headache and sat around waiting for the Aleve to kick in, by the time I got to the subway I knew I wouldn’t make it in time, but then … People were running up the stairs screaming – there’s a man on the track! – They seemed to be mad at the man in the booth, but what could he do? He grabbed the phone as soon as he could.
So I got on the bus. Limited so it only went as far as 68th, I needed to go to 59th. I walked it, then got on the “R” train, which is not the right train. I got off the train at Queens Plaza to catch the E to Court Square, instead I got on the M and ended up … back at Lexington and 59th. Which is weird, cause I didn’t think the M stopped there. From there I got on the right train an went to work. Only 2 hours late.
People always comment how New Yorkers don’t wait for the walk signal, we just wait for the traffic to clear and dart across the street. It’s like we are a city of rule breakers. I have to agree, let me explain.
What’s the biggest rule moms tell their kids? No not clean your room! That’s mom’s fantasy. No moms are always telling their kids, Don’t get in a car with a stranger. Right? So you live your life running away from ride offers from people you don’t know.
Then you move to NYC, and you don’t have a car because, A) it is freakishly expensive to keep a car in NYC; B) the subway and bus system is beyond compare, who needs a car? Then one day you’re in a rush, you need to get across town RIGHT NOW, so you stick out your arm, a yellow car stops and you get in. You get in a car WITH A STRANGER. BOOM, mom’s rule has been broken.
But wait, you say, it is this strangers job to transport you safely to your destination (notice I said safely, not necessarily untraumatized, but I’ll consider cabbie driving habits in another post), maybe so I say, BUT, we all watch TV, and we know there are serial killers masquerading as taxi drives just waiting for a snowstorm and an unsuspecting victim! Once you break this rule and survive, this emboldens you break other rules, like crossing against the light. It’s no wonder we all do it.
Since I eliminated some foods: soda, processed meat, coffee and cutting back on others I have noticed some changes. For one thing, I really miss coffee. And my stomach is getting better. I am starting to pinpoint some foods that should definitely be avoided and some that I probably should eat more of. Also I need to eat more regularly and eat real meals instead of just snacking. I should eat less sugar also.
All this is an attempt to avoid going to a Gastroenterologist since I did that when I thought I had an ulcer. Meaning I know what tests they are going to want to do and I am not ready for that.
In the interest of healing myself, I googled probiotics and found some sites with lists of foods high in probiotics. There is a good slide show at Livestrong.com. Briefly the list is:
Green peas – raw
Dark chocolate
Natto – Japanese breakfast food
Kefir
Miso
Kombucha tea
Umeboshi plums -eaten by Samurai
Yogurt
Sauerkraut – unpasturized
Pickles – made with fermentation
Cheese
Tempeh
Kimchi
Looking over this list, there are some foods I recognize, some I don’t and some I never eat. I knew about yogurt and kefir, in fact I have been having a half cup of kefir in the morning and evening. I didn’t know about green peas although eating carrots and celery seemed to help. I knew dark chocolate had some good things for you. The fact that miso contains probiotics explains why I can eat the miso ramen. 6 foods are Asian, apparently the Asian way of fermenting foods either produces probiotics or doesn’t kill them. I never eat pickles, sauerkraut and never tried Kimchi because of the vinegar allergy, also I don’t like sauerkraut. Now I can claim that my allergies are killing me.
Progress is being made. I am writing down everything I eat so when I do have an ‘attack’, which is still happening I can look at what I’ve been eating and make adjustments. If nothing else, I know what to do to get relief. The pain doesn’t go away as quickly as it I had a pill to take, but it does go away.
Lately I’ve been complaining about my stomach. Sometimes it really hurts, so bad at times I have trouble walking. Nothing has made it feel better, when it hurts I have to lie down with an ice pack and sleep. I was trying to adjust my diet, but since I don’t know what foods are aggravating it, this is a very hit or miss proposition.
I’ve been googling the symptoms and that is an exercise in futility, there are so many things it could be, symptoms matched GERD, so I started avoiding cola, coffee and alcohol, but that didn’t seem to help.
While scrolling through Facebook I came across this video, “Vampire Fungus”, which said, if you have problems with bloating etc etc watch this video. I normally don’t, but I was feeling desperate for some relief. It was long, the man referred to doctors with laughable names. Seriously I laughed at their names, until he said Dr. Oz. (Wait a minute! Wasn’t Dr. Oz exposed as a fraud? Not sure about that) Now I had to listen to the end, just to see how ridiculous he was. What gets me is the promises, I will tell you now what you need to do now to get relief, oh but first, I’m going to tell you five reasons blah blah. I might have bought his product, but he annoyed me.
So what was he selling? Probiotics. Which I can buy at the health food store, of course not the super de duper ones he sells for $70. I bought some and am giving them a try. I’m glad I didn’t buy his, since the best ones at the health food store had coconut oil in them. Yeah, that would have been great.
My friend Mary sent me an e-mail about an oyster crawl. It’s like a pub crawl, except you eat oysters instead of drinking. Rose also got the invitation and decided to come. It was at that point I realized I had to admit, after several times saying I liked oysters that, I had never had any. They never asked me why I said I liked oysters when I had never had them, I probably couldn’t have given them an answer.
We got these ‘badges’ in the email, with instructions to print them out or save to our phone/mobile devise. My printer is currently not working, and I was having fits trying to save it. I finally managed it, and then we didn’t need to show them.
My first stop was the bank. The second was the subway, I briefly considered stopping at Starbucks, then discarded the idea, only to regret it when I saw how long the wait for the train was. The first restaurant on the oyster crawl was Grey Lady down in SoHo, took me a while to find it. Rose was waiting for me, Mary was delayed by train problems. Rose has said to expect rain, so I brought my umbrella, but it was snow at this point.
We got two dozen oysters, I wrote down the names of the oysters, since I was planning on writing about it, but I can’t read my notes. It looks like we had ‘fisher plane'(Fisher’s Island) and ‘moom shoal'(Moon Shoal). I’m pretty sure that one of those is wrong, anyone reading this that knows their oyster names is probably laughing at me. I even checked my Instagram, and although I had posted this same exact photo, I didn’t note the names. (Name correction courtesy of Eating the First Oyster)
This is me eating my first ever oyster. Photo courtesy of NYC Photo.
After the oysters I had a shot of Lemon Vodka.
This is the second place we went on our NYC Oyster Crawl. True to form I wrote down the name of the oysters, “Blue Point”, and didn’t write down the name of the bar. I’m pretty sure it was Bait & Hook. There are two reasons I’m sure, one is the pictures look like the place we went, two the website says they have happy hour oysters: $1 Blue Point, and three it is one block over from Professor Thom’s. Which is where we went next. Not for oysters though, for loaded tots. Anyway these are my oysters. I only got 6, Mary got clam chowder, she wasn’t feeling the oyster love right then.
Rose got a full dozen. She apparently was still hungry for oysters. Of the three types of oysters I ate this day, these are my favorite. The oyster love continued to the next time I was at Fairway, standing at the seafood counter looking at the hunks of rock that supposedly hold oysters, thinking to myself, I wonder if I could shuck those.
A New Year’s Eve tradition is the ball drop in Time Square. It’s been going on since 1907 according to the New York Public Library (click here) and about a million people cram themselves into Time Square to watch it. I have been told I should go at least one time. To which I reply, “Get your head examined.” I don’t like Time Square when it’s not crowded with people, to be there when there are a million people would drive me to homicide. Going to prison for murder is not on my bucket list.
A) New York in January, outside in the middle of the night. Freezing temps, possible snow or sleet.
B) No backpacks allowed, so you can’t bring a snack in case you get hungry.
C) No bathrooms. And you can’t leave to go find one and then come back. Mainly because an hour after you get there you will be hemmed in on all sides and not able to leave if you were on fire. In fact, you could probably die there and no one would know until after the ball dropped.
D) If you don’t get there at noon, you won’t be able to see any of the “great” entertainment.
There is no way I am going to be standing for hours to watch a ball drop, I can do that in my living room, I don’t have to stand, I have food, water, and bathroom facilities.
This year Brooklyn decided they were going to have their own ball drop, I don’t want to imply that Brooklyn is slow or inferior to Manhattan, but the ball has been dropping in Time Square for a hundred years and they just now discovered they can have their own NYE party? Maybe they were too busy thinking about going for a dip (The Coney Island Polar Bear Club was founded by Bernarr Macfadden in 1903. They swim every Sunday during the winter.).
It sounded like fun, so I grabbed my party outfit, and caught the train to Coney Island. I actually bought that mask to go to Coney Island. I thought it would be fun and it served two purposes. My picture was taken a lot, and it kept my face warm. The breeze off the ocean was freshening. By freshening I mean freezing. I managed to get a spot in the front, and then left it because of the brutal assault of the wind. There was hot chocolate as promised, but they ran out before I got any. Even showing up at 9:00 p.m., when it officially started it wasn’t too crowded. It got a little crowded, and I ended up not seeing anything, which means I missed the freak show. I also missed the lights on the Parachute Drop because I was watching the fireworks. And I am still finding silly string and gold confetti around my apartment. I didn’t stay for the whole firework show. I was freezing, my back hurt, and I had to pee. As a public service announcement, if you are in Coney Island and need a bathroom, there are outside public bathrooms at Nathans. They are open until 1:00 a.m.
Yes I know I shot this video the ‘wrong’ way, it’s only 30 seconds so deal with it.
This weekend I am on the upper west side cat sitting. That is why I am blogging from a Mac instead of my laptop and having loads of problems. My friend (the cat’s mom) says the laptop is flakey. I think she is just being kind and it is me that is flakey. Anyway, since I can’t figure out how to get my pictures here from my phone, if you want to see the little lovelies, their blog is: Living the life of Reilly and Ryan.
Friday was my first night here, I came right from work and of course had trouble with the door. We can add that to the list of things that give me fits. Mac computers and deadbolts. Then Ryan hissed at me. No idea why, since he loves my toes, if he hisses at me they get hidden. I also told him I would drink all the beer if he continued. He soon realized I was in control of the food. I’m also cleaning your litter box Kitten Cat! I played with him for a while and I think that now, the last day I’m here, he is finally accepting me.
Both the cats like Doritos corn chips. No I was not feeding them chips! Well not intentionally. I keep trying to double space, thinking that will put a period in here.
Yesterday I had errands to run, I had to go home to get something I forgot, then I had to do some shopping. I started to worry that maybe I hadn’t fed the cats enough. After all they had gobbled up the canned food and started on the dry before I left. When I got home, there was still dry in the bowl. That is my reasoning, if there is still food, they have had enough, because if they were starving they would have eaten it all right? Then I proceeded to scare Ryan by pouring dry food in the bowl while he was eating the canned food. He ran off, and his sister promptly started eating his food. Ah siblings.
In my next post I’ll be going back in time to talk about New Year’s Eve.
Most of the time, when I am having a commute from hell and watching over-packed train after over-packed train go by, I berate myself with the every pertinent: If you had left home on time, this wouldn’t be happening! Today as I watched one, two and then stuffed myself onto the third train I thought to myself, “Today I left on time. This is so not fair!”
Leaving on time has it’s rewards however, in that even though the trains were crowded and I couldn’t get on the train until the third one, and I couldn’t read my book because it was too crowded, I got to work on time. Or at least before my boss came in.
Not really babysitting since the girl is 25, she had surgery on her sinuses on Monday and so needs someone here to make sure she is o.k. I also helped her with her sinus rinse since I am somewhat of a pro at them. After she did it, her exact words: “Oh my goodness! My nose feels so good!” She is not allowed to actually blow her nose so all the blood and other gunk just sits there. The sinus rinse clears it out as well as moisturizes her mucus membranes. I can imagine it is a wonderful feeling to get all that out of there.
For a while we weren’t able to get online. I thought my old laptop, which is now hers, had the connection to the router here saved, apparently the password has been changed. Then the hotspot on my phone wouldn’t work and I couldn’t connect through her phone’s hotspot. I sent a couple of angry texts to the boy. I always blame him for everything. Now we are online through the router instead of my phone. I just reset it and we were connected and eating up my data, for some reason the hotspot want to use cellular data not the house wifi, yes my phone and iPad were working through the wifi even though I couldn’t connect through my laptop.
After all that, I couldn’t remember what I wanted to write here. It was brilliant though.
The young male cat here has been avoiding me since I got here. For some reason he is afraid of me.
I was banished to the basement, the girl was sleeping where I normally sleep when I come and so I had to sleep in her room. My biggest complaint about sleeping in her room is the mad parrot in her room that hates me. It’s not personal she hates everyone except the girl.
And that is the end of today’s updates. Talk to you soon.
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Belleza
just a (transplanted) city girl 