Dessert

Ordered Chinese food last night.
This was my fortune inside my cookie:
"Today, your mouth might be moving but no one is listening."
That was a nice way to end my meal.

As a Matter of Fact, it's a Five-Leaf Clover

All I want to do in Prospect Park is relax. It’s August 18, about 75 degrees, not humid. Picture perfect. A day when everyone else seems to be able to relax on the freshly cut lawn. But when I lay down my sheet, I catch a glimpse of dozens of bees hovering atop the blades of grass. All kinds of bees – honey bees, yellow jackets, hornets, bees the size of hummingbirds. I resent them all for ruining my time at the park. I had to get up, finally, and move to a bench where I am now writing this. The bench is not safe territory, though. But the bees congregating here are mostly honey bees, those bees who Chris says “don’t sting.” I’m not sure if I believe him, but it is helping convince me to stay put. A woman just bent down and stuck her hand in the grass, right next to all the bees, just to see if there was a four-leaf clover. She didn’t find one, but tells her friend that she actually already has a five-leaf clover. They pass me by and continue on their walk:

“Are you serious—a five-leaf clover?”

“Yes. It was one of the first clovers I ever found.”

I don’t really understand what this means since within a five foot radius of my bench, there has to be close to a million clovers. How does one distinguish a “found” clover? Is it one that is picked? It’s a strange concept to me and I am skeptical that one of the “first clovers” this woman ever picker was a five-leaf clover. Don’t we first search for four-leaf clovers when we are about three feet tall? I never found a four-leaf clover so I would be insanely jealous of a fellow five year old picking a five-leaf clover upon her first trot across a clover-filled lawn. So, I’m a five-leaf clover virgin: jealous, hungry, and bitter.

During my yogatoday (www.yogatoday.com) class this afternoon, I spit up a hunk of mucus so big that I had trouble catching my breath as it lodged half-way between my throat and my mouth. “Is there such a place?” you ask. Yes and I discovered it today. Anyhow, with all the upward and downward dogs, I was expecting the dislodged mucus. I could feel the bubble crackling rumble after each inhale and knew by the end of the class that the sputum would make its entrance (or exit). I have a doctor’s appointment on September 12^th and I wonder if this mysterious “bronchitis” (diagnosed by two different doctors) will turn into tuberculosis or cancer by then. It will be my first appointment with my official Primary Care Physician with my new health insurance.

In choosing my PCP, I asked my landlord if she had a doctor that she recommended. As a matter of fact, she did. She even had a list of runners-up and OB/GYN candidates. I was legitimately excited about having full-on health insurance and about getting a doctor who came recommended. So, I called the doctor’s office to make my first appointment and as a matter of fact, she happens to be on maternity leave through November. She (her voicemail) suggests that I contact Dr. B____’s office (one of the runners-up from my landlord). So, I do. As a matter of fact, this doctor is also on maternity leave. I ask the receptionist if she can recommend another doctor and she says “no.” Click. End of phone conversation. So, I decide to ask a fellow dancer who has the same health plan about her doctor. She gives me her name and look up the info on the health insurance website. Voila, she’s listed. Her office is at Columbus Circle, but I figure if she comes recommended by a dancer, then the trip will be worth it. [Dancers are hypochondriacs: so in tune with physical sensations and overall system functioning that a leg cramp is a definite sign of a blood clot. Vice versa: the seven year clicking in the hip that causes severe limping and an awkward catapult out of bed each morning is ignored. Later to be discovered that is severe arthritis and a reason for hip replacement at age 40.] I call the 800 number on the back of my insurance card and ask them to change my PCP. As a matter of fact, Dr. I___ “doesn’t take your plan,” I am informed.

“Well, that’s funny because Elise is on my plan and she is her doctor.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am.”

“Thanks for your help. I’ll call back.”

Back to square one. I am living in Brooklyn with thousands of doctors within a five mile radius but some of these physicians are listed as “Eligible” under Board Certification on the website instead of “Certified.” To be fair, I don’t know the difference, but decide that “Certified” is probably best. I am at a loss. Do I close my eyes, slide my finger across the page and randomly choose whoever my finger lands on? I decide to do a PCP search within a three mile radius of my zip code. I discover a doctor right around the corner: a woman, a Family Physician. I google her name and locate her personal website. It’s fantastic: she looks friendly, posing with her children, telling readers that she wanted to start her own private practice so that she could get to know her patients better and give them better care and attention. Perfect! I’m psyched. I call back the insurance company and tell them I would like to change my PCP to Dr. C_____.

“Hmmmm. I seem to be getting blocked with my request.”

“OK. What does that mean?

“Well, I can put in a request and they will get back to you within five business days.”

“Ok. Sounds good.”

I hang up and decide that I will contact the doctor directly. I notice that on the appointment page on her website there is a posting from October 2006 that states she is not accepting new patients. Since it is August 2007, I decide that I will push my luck. I send her an email asking if there is any chance of getting an appointment with her. She responds the next day saying that she doesn’t expect being able to see new patients for “at least a few years.” I think google has changed everything. Dozens of other people just like me probably did the same google search, had the same thought process and decided that she had to be their doctor (just a year before I did). In her email, she recommends another doctor. I do yet another google search and find an obituary for this new doctor. Not a good sign. But after some more google research and a return to the insurance website, I see that the recommended doctor is alive and well in Brooklyn. Same name as the deceased, just 40 years younger. I call the insurance company, change my doctor, call my new doctor and make my first appointment.

Finding my new doctor was like finding that four-leaf clover.

It was that simple.

I’ll just be dry-heaving mucus onto my rug for the next three weeks.

TORNADO IN BROOKLYN!

It’s 5:30am and the flicker of a strobe light wakes me up. It takes me a few seconds to realize that the strobe light is actually lightning striking so rapidly outside the window that it seems someone is operating an “On/Off” switch. The sounds of thunder make it seem that we are below a bustling bowling alley. I sit up in bed with a full bladder and am irrationally frightened of walking to the bathroom, thinking that this basement apartment will be struck by lightning and go up in flames. Somehow the bed seems safer than the floor. “The car is the safest place to be during a thunderstorm,” my mom used to tell us as she drove down to the lake during stormy summer days and we would sit to watch the violent upheaval of the waves. A half hour passes and the storm begins to grow quiet, I visit the bathroom and return to bed in one piece and I fall back asleep.

Waking up a few hours later, I turn on the television to see FoxNews “TORNADO HITS BROOKLYN.” The news coverage continues to inform me that all New York City subway lines are not running, there are trees strewn across cars, and that it will be 95 degrees today. Chris pumps up his bike tires, I gather together my laptop and headphones and we leave the apartment together: Chris to Manhattan, Erin to the air-conditioned coffee shop down the block. As I walk into the café, I see that all the Brooklynites who decided to stay away from the subway have chosen to come to my coffee shop/office to do work. This makes me frustrated, watching the novice tele-commuters scream into their cell phones while gesticulating wildy with their other hand. The cell phones are turned up to the highest ring, with Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” blasting away in one corner and Bob Marley’s “Jammin’” playing along with a synchronized vibration on the table of an absent owner (presumably in the bathroom). The more experienced independent workers take their phone calls outside, put their cell phones on vibrate, and bop in their seats to the late 70s folk music once in awhile. The Stranded Subway Brooklynites who can’t cross the East River today are not impressed with the musical choices as they talk on their cell phones, plugging their free ear with their finger, “I can’t hear you above this soft rock!”

Evidently, the people-watching today is going to provide me with a plethora of distractions.

My favorite conversation is one between a woman and a man, both about my age. They are discussing her job as an anti-bias educator who teaches public school teachers and his career transition in the real estate market (something about him threatening a law suit so the firm let him go with a severance package of $10,000). Luckily, it is mindless work that I am catching up on today so I am completely dedicated to eavesdropping on their conversation.

The woman is attractive, average height, with dark, curly hair which she eventually pulls back into a loose pony tail. She is dressed in dark colors and projects her voice aggressively. In particular while the man is discussing his latest career disaster she goes, what I call, all “Bitchy-Concerned.” Bitchy-Concerned is prevalent among pretentious urban women, and it is not limited to New Yorkers. When an empowered woman is in the company of a friend who she feels is not making the most of himself (or herself), who is having a difficult time, who is not as successful as she is and has the potential to be an embarrassment, the Bitchy-Concerned feign a motherly, yet aggressive attention: wide-eyed, exasperated. They believe they are the sole individuals who can defend a less successful friend’s honor. They would like this action to be interpreted as a gracious, empathetic gesture but in reality it stems from a fear of being friends with someone less ambitious. She definitely seems Manhattan (as opposed to Brooklyn).

My first impression is to indicate that the woman is white and the man is black. But, since their conversation revolves around race issues and anti-bias education, I am now aware that she does not “identify with the white privileged race because [she] is Jewish.” She makes her point to her black male friend that she feels discriminated against “often.” She also talks about her recent stay in Los Angeles where she had been for three months and about the nice subway system there and how no white people ride it…but she did…she rode it “all the time.” Several minutes later, as he is trying to grasp a better understanding of her time there, she off-handedly remarks that she “rode the subway five or six times while I was there.” Indeed, she “rode it all the time”:

3 months divided by 5 times = NOT “ALL THE TIME”

She discusses race issues (police relations with the community, teen pregnancy, educating teachers) with her friend and he mostly says “yeah” and “no way.” She is “outraged” by discrimination and prejudice and fifteen minutes later says, “I wonder if there are Republicans here.” Oh, the irony.

The last thing I find out from her is that she will be attending a Doctoral Program at a prestigious university where she will be a research assistant for a “world-renown” professor. Of course, she is going to this prestigious university because she “didn’t want to go to Harvard or Stanford.”

I sit in my seat and look around to see if anyone else is listening to this conversation. I can’t find any eye contact, but I see one guy rubbing his forehead as he stares at the barista and I recollect another woman seceding her throne next to the conversation to drink her iced coffee in the less ironic 95 degree weather in the café garden.

The “TORNADO” in Brooklyn had thrown me into the orbit of an amazing conversation away from which I could not tear myself. I wonder if people are at all self-aware. I also wonder if I will be forced to get my doctorate in order to cancel out the idiocy of the people who are congregating my world.