First order of business:

My favorite wool sweater is DISINTEGRATING. How do I even fix this? Also, it was free, as in, I stole it from Tyler.

Secondly, I just want to say, after all the coverage on the suicide of the 15 year old Irish immigrant student, that there are so many kids I wish I had beaten up in school. I literally dream about being in high school settings where someone sets me off, and then I stomp on their face. I can immediately think of one particular person who most deserves to get their face stomped, and although I have mostly come to terms with her existence, I get angry every time I think about her manipulative personality.

Every day when I go to work, students come up to me because they have a problem with a bully. It's crazy to me how early the social order starts forming. I can't encourage it out loud, but sometimes I wish these students would just knock a bitch out.
Sometimes I wish I could trade bodies with Nancy and WAIL on some of the horrible kids at her school.

-Karen

For the past 4 days I have walked at least 100 blocks, every day. Even though it's been chilly as hell, New York is absolutely beautiful this time of year and it's doing wonders for my spirits. Today is catch-up day, however, and no walks will be taken. Too bad my life can't just be one long, beautiful walk: with me always moving, my scenery always changing, and the endorphins constantly flowing. No metaphors here. I want my life to be a walk where I no longer will have to eat, pee, or sleep, and will instead just be able to float around; legs slightly achey, stomach slightly empty, always feeling the sun on my skin (rain is occasionally fine, too).

On one of the walks I saw this.
It is a slide. It could not have been more than a foot-and-a-half tall. Adorable.

Last night/this morning I made $140 buckaroos. As is fitting, I want to spend it all on dunkaroos.

-Camille

I bought gala apples today, and I just noticed that on the sticker, there's a picture of a fish. Why?

I watched a PBS special today on pirates, especially Calico Jack and Blackbeard and I thought, we should be hosting this special, and getting to travel to Jamaica and sampling street food whose recipes have been in the family for generations, and not this blonde bitch. Let's work for PBS and film exciting documentaries about pirates and outlaws and how much our lives have been affected by Bill Nye.

-Karen

It's very strange that you bring up ice-cream men, because I was thinking yesterday about how one of the jobs topping my "I do not ever want to have this job" list is ice-cream man. I'm not a fan of interacting with children, the food-service industry, driving near children (inherently unpredictable beings with small bodies + my poor depth perception = gore), ice cream in general, and being indoors (or in a truck) during summer.

My relationships with animals are always a little off. I've only enjoyed the company of one dog in my life, a dog which I loved with a passion while I was at the same time very afraid of ALL other dogs. I had pet gerbils with my sister when we were growing up, but the only time I ever held them was when I was putting them in their little rolling balls while I cleaned their tank. Even then I would usually just put the balls inside their tank and nudge the gerbils inside with a single, reluctant finger.

Contrast this to 10+ years older Camille who last month had a mouse in her bedroom for over a week. When other people screamed and cried and slept in other buildings to avoid the thing, I would drift to sleep happily, content that my little mouse friend was enjoying her new home (I took her nocturnal, noisy squeaking and shuffling as little nods of approval to my gracious hospitality). When it came time for her to go (when I finally was able to trap her in a yogurt container and set her free), my heart-strings were downright tugged. I cuddled her, cooed at her, eye-gazed with her, and named her (Ophelia). There was such an attachment to this little mouse friend that had kept me company for so many mornings and late, late evenings that, when it came time for me to take her out of the building, I wanted to cry (please note that I didn't actually cry). Explain that one to me.

I saw this parked on my street today. I'd never seen a van like that before in person. Neat.

Today, walking on Central Park West, I met a man who was sprightly. That's the only word I can think to describe him. As soon as I saw him, I just gasped out loud, "he is sprightly." They made the word for him. He was short (5'2" max), extremely fit/slender with a small waist, had very light grey hair, and was the fastest walker I've ever seen.

I am a fast walker. I have long legs and decent strength in them. Years of practice have allowed me to develop a stride so powerful and long that I can't remember a time where I haven't been able to easily keep up with another person when walking on flat ground. This guy was blowing past me. I was walking as fast as I could short of trotting, but for every 8 feet I covered, he'd cover 10. And I was pushing.
I followed him for about 9 blocks (we were going in the same direction!) and that entire time I was analyzing his stride, trying to find where this man whose legs were so much shorter than mine was getting all of this speed! I couldn't figure it out. I imagined him in many different scenarios. Climbing trees, rock-climbing, doing ballet and yoga, and sprinting, all with ease. I have never been in awe of another person's body like that before. No, not just because he was fast. He had perfect posture and was small but strong and completely in control of his physical self. It was amazing to watch.
I will never have a body like his. Yes, I can get stronger and leaner and more flexible and develop better posture etc. etc. But I will never be a compact little machine like him.
I'd have to chop of parts of my legs to get that small, and that would just make me stumpy, not sprightly (stumpy because of the literal stumps, not simply because the proportions would be off).

-Camille

I know it's spring now because the ice cream man is parked outside the school where I tutor, and as I'm walking inside to start work, some of the kids are walking home with ice cream. I bet that ice cream man is a rich man, or as rich as ice cream men can be. Isn't it funny how it's perfectly acceptable to buy things from men in trucks, but not to take?

Camille, I wonder if your animal dilemma would be affected by having a pet. I for one, was terrified of dogs when I was younger, and they all seemed to me like they were going to eat my face. I once was on a walk with my grandmother, and a large (to my slightly shorter 5 year old self,) black dog came rather close, and started to bark at us. I dropped her hand and ran, and we hustled it back home.
Then, I met Jamie's dog and we were best pals. Another classmate of ours had an intimidating Rottweiler, who liked me best of all our friends and siblings, and liked especially to sit next to me while I played Pretty Pretty Princess.
Both of them were big black dogs, and I think I liked them so much because they made me confront my fear in its actual form, kind of like a Boggart.

-Karen

I went to the garden to see whether life had started again. Melodramatic, yes, but everything felt dead this winter and I needed to see if all of that bullshit had worn itself out. When I was younger, winter was over when I'd see little yellow and purple crocuses sprouting around the trees in my front yard. Now in the city, I no longer have my crocuses, so I no longer know how to dress myself in March/April (if it is spring and flowers are a-blooming, I will dress according to that. I have no idea what 68 degrees F feels like, nor do I know how it's any different from 58F, 48F, or even 75F. I know that if it's below 20F, coats are good. And if it's above 85F, sleeves must be short. That's it).

Anway. I went to the garden for some self-reflecting and to really hammer it into my head that hooray! it is spring and healthy doses of sprightliness/jubilation must be adopted into my demeanor accordingly. I sat on a bench with the intention of finishing some readings I had to do, but I ended up reading a page and then packing it all a way, deciding that rubbing my feet on the cold ground and staring at the birds was a better option.

So there I was, Briar Rose with my little bird/squirrel friends, when a peacock strolled up. I had seen that guy many times before, and I'd even seen him as I was entering the garden that day (he was sitting on top of the wall), but I'd never given his existence much thought. I am a vegan, but I am not an animal lover. Some animals are cute, some are nice to touch, and some have beautiful colors, but I am just as happy experiencing animals by flipping through National Geographic as I am seeing them in real life.

So this beautiful tough-guy walked up to me and I took a few pictures. It felt strange that I was the only one in this blooming, beautiful space. No one else in the world could see the two of us; no one else knew what I was doing, what I was feeling, or what I was thinking. I felt as if no one else for miles knew just how ALIVE the world was, just how buzzing and bright everything was: I felt as if I was the only one in on the secret that, HEY, IT'S SPRING.

He stopped about a foot and a half away from my extended foot and stared at me. I had put down my camera at this point, both because I wanted to savor the moment, and also because I remember being told many times that peacocks are notoriously aggressive animals. If I am going to get killed by a peacock, I don't want to see myself getting mauled through a viewfinder. No, I'd at least like to know what's going on through my real eyes.
That was my reasoning.

He stopped about a foot away from me and stared. He came up closer to my side and I stared calmly, trying to determine if I felt any sort of connection between me and him. He then turned around and his long tail feathers fell on top the end of my sticking-out leg, running their way down and across my bare foot as he sauntered off.

It was a beautiful reminder that things besides masses of unsmiling, black-coat-wearing, fast-walking people live in NYC. Peacocks do, too.

A peacock in its natural city environment

-Camille