When the Snow is on the Punkin...

All in a day's [search for] work

It seems that I am most moved to blog in the eery afterglow of natural aberrations such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and, this past weekend, an October blizzard that dumped 12 inches of heavy packed snow on Jersey City, downing powerlines and felling leafy trees all over the tri-state area. Nine of our teachers trudged into school this week with hair slicked back and clothing rumpled, having no light or heat to dress by. As for me,

Mums on apt. stoop pre-blizzard

I weathered the weather relatively unscathed, unless you count Margaret's grand scathing, having taken 14 hours of traveling to arrive after midnight on Saturday when her plane was diverted to Syracuse because Newark airport had to close down. Diverted to Syracuse because of weather? Who does that?

Mums next morning after blizzard

Then after her Monday morning job interview to which I dropped her off two minutes before the appointment with a roomful of New Jersey college and university presidents after a two-hour drive that we "dry-runned"the day before, clocking 36 minutes door-to-door, I suggested we relax with a fall hike through the Watchung Mountain reservation. Three hours of driving after that, with GPS lady in meltdown mode as we "recalculated" about two dozen routes with fallen trees and precariously dangling power lines in search of the trailhead, we decided to head back to Jersey City and have a celebratory or at least "good luck" drink. Margaret suggested the hardscrabble Astor Bar across the street from the school where, the day I moved in, we first met "Riter" (Rita) the barkeep and her surly band of Irish Foo dog ex-Marines who routinely kick the "other" locals (Arab, Dominican) out. I declined that setting, not because we planned to tie one on, but because I really didn't want to know which of my staff were in there doing their own tying. So, I proposed we relax in one of the trendy taverns in Hoboken near Carlos' Bakery (The Cake Boss). Somehow, an hour later, our car illegally parked at a 7-Eleven, I and poor, sainted Margaret ended up downing a stale Blue Moon as the sole patrons of the only bar we could find on the main drag of Bayonne with the neighborhood kids filing in and out the door every few minutes for aborted trick or treat attempts.

Weather aside...What I'm really thinking as I pace my 2-room apartment

In what I believe Margaret and you other disability folks would call stereotopy, or locomotive ritual repetitive behavior, I shuffle from room to room in my cozy space and I think things. And these things I think teach me some new information about myself that in almost 50 years of living with me I had not yet known. 

It's my blog so I'm going to say it: I like my poor people quiet. I don't like them shouting Arabic over the fire escape into my apartment a yard away. I like them compliant, polite, clean, and patient. I like them to give me personal space of at least a foot in a check-out line. I like them not to demand my backpack when I go into the grocery store and then give me a dirty old wooden clothespin with a number on it in exchange for the backpack so I can retrieve it when I leave the store. I like the raisins I buy in that grocery to be in a box marked Sun-Maid or some other namebrand I can email when I find they are hard as little pebbles. I like when the expiration dates on the yogurt, milk and lettuce I buy at the bodega not to be two days from now. 

 I like to walk to work on Monday mornings and not pass at least five toppled trashcans along the way. 

True, could be Bloomington outside a student rental

I like poor people who don't maneuver their wheelchairs between the cars when I'm caught between lights at an intersection and rap on my window with their..stumps. I like smiling, happy poor people who don't curse loudly in the long line at the post office that has no self-service kiosk to buy stamps or shelves with priority mailers and boxes I can just pick up and mail from work. I like poor people with teeth who can eat the egg flatbread I just bought them when they stand outside of Dunkin Donuts begging for change. I don't like the eyes of poor people when they "win" a white elephant prize for $20 they just bid on at a school Moms Night Out fundraiser  because the box was wrapped pretty and all that was inside was a bottle of ketchup. I don't like the kind of poor people who stand on the top bleacher and curse out the refs, the coaches and the cheerleaders at their children's sporting events and then get in the face of the cops who then get in their faces until everyone's red spitting angry and throwing punches. I like poor people who don't lean on their horns when the third firetruck in two blocks weaves among all the traffic that has nowhere to go unless they take a few pedestrians out to make room. I don't like the combination of poor people, thin walls, squeaky floors and loud sex next to and below my apartment when I'm trying to read.

I didn't know all this about myself. Now I do.

I know this is not the greatest blog I ever wrote and I'm not proud of it. But it's true.

Honest, next blog I'm getting to the kids, the reason I came here. I promise!