Workers

Living here means longer days. Am I experiencing the City That Never Sleeps syndrome? Our commute, if calculating it the same as our co-workers do, begins at 5 a.m. each day, when the alarm sounds. Actually, more like 8 after, seeing as that's the approximate time Craig fumbles his way through the dark room before hitting the shower. I have the luxury of remaining immobile for the following 25 minutes, but that isn't by any means restful sleep time. We leave the apartment by no later than 6.15, hopefully sooner, walk to our favorite nearby subway station, ride Express for 2 stops, transfer trains and ride for half an hour on the dot. Then we have a 5-7 minute walk to our office. By the time all is said and done, the clock has shifted to the 7 o'clock hour, or a little after. Then comes the work. Office work is not only exhausting in nature, but it's also predictable. My portion of the office work is predictable, at least, and being able to predict the entire day before you've stepped off the train is what can cause such boredom, such complete agony at the mere thought of approaching a single task. What saves me is not only the fact that the project itself is exciting, but also that the people, on average, are interesting to work near and around. Not to mention the fact that I am fortunate in that I get to work alongside the person I most care about in the world, and it doesn't seem to have any undesirable affects on our personal relationship at home. In fact, if anything, I appreciate him all the more because I witness his talent in play amongst other professionals in the field. Any way you look at it, we're not walking back to the train until anywhere between 5 and 7, commonly closer to the 6 o'clock hour in the evening. In a case like yesterday, I walked to the first train solo (he had to stay later). The train was slower than usual. Even my transfer to the Express at 42nd dragged its feet (or, I dragged mine, or a combination thereof). Then I stopped for wine. Then I stopped for groceries, where I felt, at that point, like bricks had been roped to my ankles, as heavy as my legs felt. Then I ducked into our neighborhood laundrymat (where, I am proud to announce, I have resigned to dropping off my laundry to have it cleaned by the professional little Asian women who run the place, despite my anxiety attacks over letting anyone breathe on my laundry much less do it) and I retrieved our cube of laundry (that's the end result when you drop off your clothes: a perfect, heavy, tidy cube of laundry wrapped in plastic). By the time I collapsed across the threshold of our apartment, unloaded wine, groceries, my heavy purse and a laundry cube to the kitchen floor, it was leaning toward 7 o'clock. And this is the life of a worker...? Workers' stories vary in length, depth, width and time, and surely I've got it easy compared to many. I notice workers constantly in the City. I see them hosing sidewalks, opening fruit stands, shaping laundry cubes (!) I see busy waitstaff bustling food and beverage to a hungry New York all along the streets and in restaraunts. I see cabbies weaving in and out of nonexistent traffic lanes on the avenues and along side streets, delivering impatient New Yorkers to their many, many, many destinations. Sometimes when we're walking I see one person walking an offbeat collection of dogs, must be dog-walking for a quick buck. Carry-out is delivered on bicycle. Electricians try to re-power Queens in the midst of an exaggeratedly long blackout. There is just so much work to do to keep a City like this awake and alive, and certain of its tomorrow. It's unbelievable, the amount of work performed each breathing second in this place. I'm not trying to downplay work in other parts of this hardworking country, but here, it's underfoot to the point of impossible to ignore. Plus, there's the exhaustion of our own jobs that reminds me. But New York is so much more than just work. I'm slipping this post in to get work off my chest, to get my single work mention over with before I really try to get back into the hang of writing here, narrating slight events that will jog my memory later when I look back and wish to recall how absolutely thrilling it was to be a part of this artery of the country for a brief span of time; what an honor it was to participate in the vast community of multimillions who rise in the morning, leave their comfortable homes, spend more time confronting menial obstacles than pursuing anything meaningful in their own lives, return home after a handful of errands, just so tired that the head hits the pillow faster than it has a chance to appreciate the comfort of cushion to skull. Yet, I will not forget the amount of pocketed energy New Yorkers seem to carry around which enables them to still appreciate the end of the day, the brisk City stride home, the intimate sizes of their homes, the happy hour at the chic restaurant next door, the cell phone conversation with a friend who waves from the opposite side of the street while you've been talking until you coordinated your meeting point. Living in New York is not about sitting down and watching it happen: it's constant motion. Since we've arrived, it's been rare that I've sat longer than a few minutes without jumping up to tend to something. I don't know what has happened to my ability to sit still but it's becoming a natural impulse to jump up, to walk fast, to do as much in an hour as I can manage. And I love it.*Enough about work, and motion. My hysterical and brilliant friend Jen (the bride from late June) is arriving at JFK Friday at 3. She can boast First Visitor (though Lauren wants an honorable mention as First Local Visitor!) Craig and I must print a rough draft of writing and must purchase our official Visitor's Guide blank book, the content for which we've been brainstorming over cocktails and delicious New York food for weeks now. Since Jen is the First Visitor, we will need to have a page ready for her signature, date and comments on her weekend in the City. Before her arrival, there are still several things I would like to do in the apartment - but for tonight, we stopped and picked up the pot and pan wall-mounted hanging thing which clears much of our limited storage space in the kitchen. That helped, and even looks nice. We ate salads for dinner and I browsed my catalog of writing classes, which I hereby shyly admit made me feel like a girl in a candy store; I intend to enroll as soon as I can save the huge stash of cash it will require. But I'm setting a deadline: if I'm not enrolled before the beginning of September, I'm plain stupid. I don't have time to waste any longer. And now that I've recognized that New Yorkers don't sleep much - and why should I? - I have seriously no reason to put off the inevitable, which is to enroll in a fiction course to actually entertain the notion that there might be a thing or two I'd like to explore in the way of made-up narrative.*With a dismissive wave of my hand to this boring and tiring entry, I'm off to find that cushion for my skull. Until tomorrow, New York. And I love having you here.*