101 Things

Inspired by recent events and Kerri's NYC pedicab experience, I just thought of 101 things to write about:

1. I’ve left my meter in strange places.

2. Once I left it in either a dark NYC cab or in the bathroom of the Nederlander Theatre, where I took Mr. Lyrehca to see Rent while we were still dating long distance (he in Mass, me in NY).

3. I went back to the theatre after we’d headed uptown for dessert, but never found the meter.

4. I have also left my (replacement) meter in the back of a cab when I was heading home to my then-uptown apartment at the end of a night.

5. I had my receipt because I was freelancing full time then and therefore deducting anything I could for tax reasons.

6. I was able to call the NYC Taxi & Limo Commission listed on the taxi receipt, get them to call the cab driver at his home in New Jersey, and he returned my meter (with a vial of insulin and a just-opened bottle of test strips) to me the very next day.

7. “Go on, open it,” he told me. “It’s all there.”

8. “I trust you,” I told him, grateful he’d brought my meter back to midtown where I was working. Besides, why would he want a bottle of insulin and a meter if he wasn’t diabetic?

9. I gave him an extra $20 to thank him.

10. Before I went on my pump, I once took insulin while sitting on a (nearly empty!) subway car because I’d just eaten a container of yogurt and needed to take a shot for it.

11. I didn’t look at anyone, and injected into my arm.

12. A woman sitting a few seats down from me apparently watched. When I was done, she declared that “Jesus loves you.”

13. Since I'm Jewish, I am pretty sure he doesn’t.

14. I used to read the Insulin-Pumpers.org emails religiously.

15. Mr. Lyrehca asked what was so intriguing about them, and asked if we diabetics had a secret code, like a word jumble.

16. “Do you all sit around and talk about your “TERMEs,” meaning meters, he asked.

17. To this day, I don’t read the emails quite so closely, but Mr. L. still calls my meter a Terme.

18. We’re dorks like that.

19. I thought of this last night after I got home from work and couldn’t find my keys in my purse, so I dumped the whole thing out on the floor of our back hallway.

20. There were the keys.

21. A bit later, I couldn’t find my meter, and although I searched the back hallway for it, I didn’t see it.

22. I wondered if I’d have to call the local commuter rail service to ask if they’d found my meter.

23. I shuddered.

24. I looked one last time and found the dark meter case behind the back door, shrouded in darkness.

25. Our back hallway doesn’t have a light, if you haven’t guessed.

26. We honeymooned in Hawaii, and the first night there, I thought I hadn’t packed half my supplies for my insulin pump.

27. I searched the bottom of the bag I was *sure* I’d packed them in, and couldn’t find them.

28. I called Minimed’s customer service and begged them to send me the supplies directly to the hotel in Hawaii that day.

29. They did so.

30. After they arrived, Mr. L. looked in the bag and saw a second smaller bag, also a dark color, jammed into the bottom of the larger bag I’d frantically searched.

31. Voila! There were my supplies I was so sure I didn’t have.

32. Honestly, I was finally glad I had more supplies I needed, rather than less.

33. I mean, it’s not like I wouldn’t use them up eventually.

34. Which I did.

35. And when I called Minimed to re-order the next batch of pump supplies, do I have to tell you where they were sent?

36. That’s right. To the Hawaiian hotel.

37. Where we definitely do not live.

38. Sadly.

39. That place was awesome.

40. They eventually shipped my supplies to our frigid Massachusetts home.

41. The frigid home is living up to its name, since I prefer things “tropical” and the Mister prefers them “bracing.”

42. My New York apartment used to be tropical without effort.

43. It was in a building where they turned up the heat, without fail, from October to May.

44. I didn’t have a thermostat, so I often walked around the house in a t-shirt and my underwear after I got home.

45. I didn’t pay extra for heat.

46. Our current frigid home doesn’t work that way.

47. We most definitely pay for heat.

48. Hence, the bracing effect.

49. It’s the first day of fall, officially.

50. This means we should probably close our windows.

51. The windows the Mister likes to keep open.

52. Our house has something called “a whole house fan.”

53. You turn it on and a giant fan built into the ceiling starts to whir.

54. When the windows are open, it will suck cool air from outside into the house.

55. It was nice in the summer, and at night, we didn’t need air conditioning if there was a breeze outside.

56. Now that’s it’s September, it’s contributed to the bracing effect.

57. I love summer, love wearing shorts and sandals, and sincerely miss it when it’s over.

58. I hate being cold.

59. Fall to me just means the beginning of nine months of cold.

60. Should this pregnancy continue on in a healthy and positive way, it means our kid will be born in the spring.

61. And I’ll have the summer to hang out with the kid.

62. If I take a full 12 weeks of maternity leave.

63. I’m undecided about whether I’ll return to my job.

64. I love working, and love making money.

65. But I have an hour commute each way and with a young baby at home, will I want to spend that much time away from her/him?

66. Particularly when it was such an effort to get pregnant in the first place.

67. While some of you have charmingly called this fetus “Baby L” or “Baby Lyrehca,” the Mister continues to call the baby “Hod.”

68. I continue to point out that the name is a disaster in the making.

69. Odd and fraud rhyme with Hod.

70. So does God, Mr. L. retorts.

71. “What if Hod was watching us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a baby on the bus, trying to make his way home,” Mr. L. actually sung to me recently.

72. I couldn’t stop laughing. (See 18.)

73. We couldn’t remember the singer who sang that song.

74. Then I remembered: Joan Osbourne.

75. She had a fake nose ring and curly blond hair in the video for the song.

76. Where is she now?

77. Thank you for your nice comments about Mr. L’s convalescence.

78. We saw a local doc on Tuesday, who talked to us for two minutes, then said the Mister had a bulging disk in his back and needed surgery ASAP.

79. Like, next week.

80. Being medical snobs, we want to get a second opinion from a bigger-city hospital where we think the doctors are better.

81. Trying to get an appointment with one has been a production.

82. I am pushy and unyielding when it comes to getting my way into a doctor’s appointment.

83. Mr. L. is less so.

84. He refers to me as his pushy wife who is much better at these things than he is.

85. I had to call his primary care’s office, the preferred specialist’s office, and calmly explain, yet again, that I was calling because my husband was in agony, on drugs, and needed to get a surgical second opinion ASAP.

86. Doctor’s offices tend to remember when I call them.

87. The latest is that I’ll get a call tomorrow telling me exactly when next week the Mister can be seen.

88. The Mister thanked me for doing all the legwork, and said he would be very grateful when it was all over.

89. I told him I could be thanked properly if we could paint our kitchen a more interesting color and replace the horrific country-klatch wallpaper that currently hangs there.

90. I am partial to bright colors, particularly on the walls of my living space.

91. My New York apartment had a turquoise living room, a bright green bathroom, and a bedroom with two walls painted fuchsia, and two painted hot pink.

92. I loved it.

93. I called it the Rainbow Treehouse, because it was on the seventh floor.

94. Our current house does not resemble a rainbow at all.

95. The Mister’s favorite color, before he met me, was beige.

96. We painted a few rooms a few colors “between beige and bizarre” of the apartment we first lived together in.

97. I’m thinking that if we have to make one of our current rooms into a nursery, it’ll necessitate painting that room.

98. And the bathroom next door, which I’d like to paint the same shade of green as my last bathroom.

99. The kitchen would be gorgeous with a light green. Or a yellow. Or a blue.

100. I’ll get my surburban rainbow house someday, I swear.

101. And the Mister will love it.