Grumblings and Groundhogs

I am done. I am done with this weather and with this never-ending season and with icy water sloshing around in my boots and lodged into my socks and tangled in my hair. I am done with the crazies in cars weaving through lanes on the sleet-encrusted roads and with storms named after the Norse gods (I feel the oncoming wrath of Thor). I’m just done.

I’m so done that if we could skip over the summer entirely and land in next autumn I would be fine with that. I’m not even mentioning spring because it’s March and spring has decided to lay another ice storm on us tonight. Like the spring has decided to play some great cosmic joke on us or it’s playing hide-and-seek (and we’re losing).

Apparently, the weather makes me irrationally angry.

...I miss the summer. — …I miss the summer.

Last night I sort of sleep-walked (slept-walked?) through my commute into the city and back home. My umbrella wouldn’t open all the way so I had to hold it open with my thumb like a torch-bearer. It finally decided to snap open—right as I was trying to get it to close so I could slide into my car. Of course, it wouldn’t be a true adventure without me stepping in ankle-deep puddles of melted snow mixed with dirty water coming from where? The sewage? Smelled like it. I came home so thoroughly soaked and chilled that I felt a little bit like a slab of meat thawing in the sink. Maybe a breast of chicken.

In my economics class, we came up with several theories to explain this weather. Global cooling. The melting of the polar ice caps bringing the snowy weather down south for longer. But my favorite blames the unfortunate murder of the official New York City groundhog earlier in February. The mayor accidentally dropped the poor creature on Groundhog’s Day, before it (he? she?) had the chance to report on whether or not we would have to suffer through six more weeks of winter. The groundhog later died of the injuries it had sustained in the fall, but I am now convinced it is having its revenge on the city of New York from beyond the grave. Mayor DiBlasio has unwittingly plunged us all into an eternal winter.

Don’t get me wrong—I love the winter. But being cold and miserable has a designated time and place in the year, and that’s not in March.

I understand that Thor is the god of lightning and tempests, which does not bode well for the oncoming storm. Maybe we should name the next one after the Norse god of unicorns and sunshine and rainbows. Just a thought.

–Marie-Irene

In the Business of Grad School

Do you want to know what an ex-humanities student writing business papers looks like?

She’s the one on the Oxford English Dictionary online reference looking up the evolution of the meaning of “corporate social responsibility.” That was one of my favorite things as an English student—typing in a word into this magical search engine to see what it meant in the eighteenth century versus the twenty-first. Because language changes and all that.

Honestly, if I could just figure out when the term “corporate social responsibility” was coined, then that would be a step in the right direction. I think. But of course the OED can’t help me there. Do you mean “corporalness?” the search engine asks me innocuously. No, I don’t. (I’m getting irrationally upset by this point.) I don’t even know what corporalness means (as in corporal punishment? or the body? I’m curious—just not enough to care).

So this is exactly what an ex-humanities student writing business papers looks like: frustrated.

Last week I began my second official semester as a bona fide International Business student. I’m practically a veteran business school student. If I ever go to get an MA somewhere, I’ll be sighing in a corner mourning what it’s like being an ex-businessperson in literature classes. I’m that fickle. And I do a very pitiable mournful sigh—sometimes I almost believe it myself.

The first day of classes was precipitated, of course, by what was supposed to be the snow of the century—the snow-pocalypse that caused New York City to shut down and Mayor DiBlasio to threaten handing out fines for people out past a certain time. I think he might have set a curfew. First he slowed the speed limit down to 25 mph. Then he set a curfew. He’ll be raising the subway fare later in the spring. I almost feel bad for the guy for the earful he’s been getting via Facebook statuses lately.

Anyway.

The snow of the century was more like the snow of the year. Remarkable in the Boston area, pathetic in NY. But at least it was pretty for a while, before it got plowed over. And at least I got two additional free days off of school. Because regardless of being a humanities student or a business student one thing always stays the same—snow days (as long as you don’t have to plow or go out) are God’s gift to students everywhere. Before it all starts to melt.

Happy early spring? I hear it’s 22° F out.

–Marie-Irene

Running Away from Christmas Olaf

When the holidays overlap with schoolwork, it’s hard to psyche yourself up for the season. It all just feels a bit weak and watered-down afterwards, or too surreal, to step out from finals and into… I don’t know. Rockefeller Center. My friend Y– and I went this weekend to see the big tree all lit up and to get into the spirit of things.

We walked from Penn to the tree by the building where they do the Christmas Spectacular (you know, the show with the Rockettes) so that we could see the holiday decorations along the way. We took photos by countless decked out water fountains and the windows at Macy’s and these huge ornaments stacked by yet another water fountain.

I took video of some people in Mickey, Minnie, and Olaf costumes, and it was all fun and games until they approached me to take my photo with them, which meant I had to walk as fast as I could in the exact opposite direction.

We got lost at Rockefeller Center. We finished up some Christmas shopping. And then we got lost again. Because we are, after all, the duo who got so lost the first time we ventured out into the city by ourselves as teenagers that the iPhone GPS told us we were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Looking back on all of those photos on the way home, we noticed two trends. The first was that since we were too shy to go up to strangers to ask them to take our photos, the selfies we wound up having to take meant that our heads were almost always blocking the decorations. Woops. Also, the two of us were never smiling at the exact same time. One of us always looked vaguely annoyed for whatever reason. Maybe we were just unimpressed by the tree this year. I didn’t think we were, but you never know.

We enjoyed a very Christmas-y dinner of pizza at this place by Chelsea Market. They don’t do individual slices unless you’re sitting at the bar, so we “had to” order a full pie. What a sacrifice. The diet begins after New Year. ‘Tis the season for resolutions, after all. And round is still some sort of shape.

Mostly.

–Marie-Irene

Lieving the Weekend

I was trudging to the campus in Manhattan the other day staring at my feet. Manhattan is not a city to wander through looking down–you miss too much–but the whether was cold and gloomy that day, and I was tired. I did not wanting to be trudging to the campus in Manhattan that day, or to be trudging anywhere else except perhaps back into bed.

I finally did look up before I disappeared down the steps to the subway to notice half of the big “Believe” sign hung and unlit across the side of Macy’s, about as un-seasonal as it gets because it was, well, October. Or early November. To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember.

“Lieve” the Macy’s sign kept telling me, like a little kid who has failed his spelling test.

“I’m trying!” I told the Macy’s sign back silently because Macy’s really gets me.

This past Monday I caught a glimpse the Macy’s sign, still unlit, but with a “Be” in the front of the “lieve” as it’s supposed to be.

The shops in Manhattan are slowly doling out the Christmas decorations in time for the polar vortex that is supposed to hit New York this week. Even the weather is getting to feel a bit more seasonal, as if the clouds are conspiring to bring about the holidays a month faster this year. But, for now, all that it feels like is that I’ll have to trudge through Manhattan today in the cold. Something tells me that I’ll be staring at my feet again.

Happy Hump Day, everybody. The week is half-way through, and if there’s one thing I can muster the energy to “believe” in today it’s that we’re one day closer to the weekend.

A pic I snapped in 2013, around this time of year.

–Marie-Irene

Preaching Lemons

Today I was evangelized at with a lemon.

I had gone on a walk and had dragged my mom along with me because I wanted the company and because if I spent another second inside the house I was going to scream. Cabin fever, I assumed, was a season-specific illness. But I’ve gotten hit with an early bout in mid-October. This does not bode well for the winter.

When life gives you lemons, say "no thank you." — When life gives you lemons, say “no thank you.”

So there we were, walking along the main street of my town when a pair of men approaches us, each carrying a lemon and a stick in hand. And they ask, “Are you **insert religious affiliation here**?” To which, of course, I responded, “No thank you.”

That’s an appropriate response, I would say. No?

Because I had not heard what they were telling us, and my mind had sort of fixated on the lemon one of the men–he couldn’t have been older than a teenager, to be honest–was waving around as he spoke. So, no thank you. It was kind of you to offer me your lemon, but I don’t want it.

Except, he hadn’t.

“Um. I mean, no. No. No, we’re not **insert religious affiliation here**,” I amended. The problem was that I responded about five seconds too late. The pair was off, out to proselytize the world with lemons.

I’m still not really sure what to make of the experience, and I’m still not really sure if I responded in the correct way. Because even when people are trying to convert me, I’m still concerned with whether or not I’m adhering to the proper etiquette. I don’t want to be impolite, after all.

I have this theory that the two most important expressions that you need to know in any given language are: I don’t know; and, I cannot. After a three-month stint in an intensive Italian course, the only think I can remember is “non so” and “non posso.” And both have served me well. Admittedly, I live in New York and have never ventured into an Italian-speaking country, but I figure that I can respond to any possible question that somebody might throw at me this way.

I can’t. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Now, if only those expressions had come out of my own mouth during this strange exchange. I imagine it would go somewhere along these lines:

“Are you **insert religious affiliation here**?”

“I don’t know.”

See?

I come off strange regardless, or, rather, bogged down with existential angst, questioning the very existence of whomever it is people worship. But certainly even that is preferable to “no thank you.”

I literally can’t take one step out the door without embarrassing myself. Or attracting the absolute strangest situations. How’s your Monday been?

–Marie-Irene