Very Superstitious.

Last week, a visit to the pediatrician ended with a referral for an echocardiogram, one they took it upon themselves to schedule FOR us, for the very next day. Those of you who have dealt with wrangling specialist appointments know that the helpfulness and alacrity with which an appointment is scheduled usually correlates to the perceived seriousness of your condition. I know this too, but this time I wasn’t really worried. It was all the result of one strikingly high blood pressure reading, and children are notorious fakers about blood pressure. However, in view of Solitary Kidney it was deemed time to finally get a look at Simone’s heart to see whether it had the musclebound, weary look of an overworked cardiac organ.
So I KNEW it was probably nothing, had been assured it was probably nothing, and didn’t even panic when a chest x-ray got tacked on at the last minute because the echo tech “saw something.” You have to go home and wait for them to call with the results, and so I did. And they did, and everything was, as expected, fine.
But weirdly, though I have overcome my need to worry about every little echocardiogram that comes our way (the fact that I am able to type a phrase like “every little echocardiogram” is proof of that), I have apparently not overcome my superstition—I couldn’t bring myself to post about the appointment BECAUSE I knew it was probably nothing. If I’d had legitimate cause to be worried, I wouldn’t have hesitated, but I wasn’t about to feign worry to appease whatever imaginary forces I fancied might smite me, and writing about how it was probably nothing seemed like the fastest way to ensure that it WAS something after all. (It’s okay if you had to read that over to yourself a time or two, trying to get it to make sense. It doesn’t.)

Anyhow, I am now free to move on. To New York! The Big Apple! The City that Never Sleeps, Probably Because It’s Up Late Worrying About Money!
Did you know that when you take a cab from the Newark airport to Manhattan they put a ONE HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLAR hold on your credit card? Or that the flat rate plus tip and miscellaneous charges can total $90? I didn’t! Lady Liberty’s torch burns something awful when it *@#%s you up the ass!
What I did know but had forgotten is that New York cabbies drive as if being chased by death himself—and, paradoxically, as if they are immortal. Against all odds, I made it to my hotel on Tuesday both alive and financially solvent, and was confronted by a lobby teeming with introverts acting like extroverts. BEA is a yearly reunion for the publishing industry, and the atmosphere was very Nerds Gone Wild (I was awakened at 3am the next morning by high-pitched “WOOOOOO!”-ing outside my door, possibly from librarians). I actually found it all quite charming, this Spring-Break-with-reading, but I didn’t know anyone, and was far too intimidated to join the fun. Instead I hid in my room for a while before deciding to slip downstairs to the hotel nail salon for a mani/pedi, so that my fingers would look presentable when signing books the next morning.

I am not a mani/pedi-getter. The first one I had was for my wedding, and I’ve gone a few times since then, but not many. They are excruciatingly expensive, at least where I’ve had them in the Twin Cities, invariably at Aveda salons staffed with graduates of the Aveda cosmetology school that has a near monopoly here. The nail salon in the hotel, on the other hand, was shockingly cheap, and a few minutes in, it became clear that what I’ve been paying extra for here at home is a vigorous massaging of my guilt. Having someone kneel by your feet for half an hour ministering to your toenails is much less uncomfortable when that person is a middle-class white girl with aggressively hipsterish hair than when the kneeler speaks very little English and is the same age as your mother. I felt guilty the WHOLE TIME—mortified, even—when I wasn’t feverishly wondering what they were saying in their native tongue that made them laugh that way, or failing entirely to understand what they were saying IN ENGLISH, TO ME, resulting in a horribly protracted round of “I’m sorry?” “I’m sorry?” and vibrant blushing. Eventually it was done (and very prettily, I might add) and I overtipped lavishly and scuttled back upstairs to my room, where I ordered and consumed a $20 hamburger and fell into a restless sleep.
Which is what I should be doing right now, damn it all (where does the time GO?), though hopefully without the restlessness, so you will have to wait until tomorrow to hear about the book signing, my not being a hooker, the mysterious case of the umbrella men, and my love for a whole new borough…