Everything I don't love not about biking

“Last week I started biking to work” I’ve been saying to any person who stands still long enough.

“How do you like biking?” ask people who know me, or who feel like talking to an enthusiastic stranger.

That is a great question thanks for asking. I LOVE some things about biking to work. I love the biking part. But there are a lot of things that aren’t the biking part. 

There’s the getting the bike down the stairs part. I noticed last week one of my legs is covered in bruises and I assumed I was growing muscles so quickly they were pushing through the skin. But this morning when I fell down the stairs holding my bike it hit me, it’s got to be the falling down the stairs that’s causing the bruises.

The front handlebars always twist and my wrist gets stuck, and the bike pins me against the wall and I’m just sort of standing there sweating and brainstorming but soon I’m out of my apartment and biking and that part’s fine. 

While biking there are a few bad things I have to do at the same time, like trying to unzip the armpit zippers on my jacket. If you ask if I enjoy unzipping the armpit zippers I will say no, but if you ask if I enjoy biking I will say definitely yes.

When the biking stops things get really bad. That’s when I have to get my keycard out of my backpack, and decide whether to try and carry my bike up the stairs or get my bike into the elevator and deal with the keycard again. I have to get the lock out, and I have to figure out how to use the lock, and at this point my nose is always running so I have to keep my head up and manage just by feel instead of sight.

Then I take my helmet off and I have crazy wind hair. If I could leave my helmet on all day it would make it all worth it.

But I love biking. Thanks for listening, woman in line next to me at the grocery store.

And thanks infinity to Krissy for loaning me the bike. Without her who knows what my hair would look like.

You’re welcome, penguins.

Until February my apartment was usually filled with flies. 

I know what you’re thinking: “That seems normal, flies aren’t anything to worry about” but it still always bothered me, sort of a nagging, dark cloud, a cloud of flies that is, hovering slowly around my apartment like a small horrible indoor weather system.

It was the plants that were causing the problem, if you considered it a problem. The flies would just sort of emanate from them. I thought maybe these particular plants grew flies instead of flowers, or that dirt was made from ground-up fly eggs. It seemed possible, I don’t know much about plants. But I still liked having them. I loved having them.

The best way to show plants you love them is to water them at least once a day. Twice a day if you think of it. And the best sort of plants to buy are ones that say they need to be watered once a week or less - those plants are low maintenance. Plants are beautiful and fun but after a few days they always turn brown and soft and then the flies come and the plants get super dead and I know what you’re thinking: How could this possibly be happening. It defies logic.

Then one day in January I accidentally left one of my plants behind a bookcase and forgot it existed. Safely out of reach from my care it transformed into a completely healthy plant, no more flies, green and vibrant and adorable.

So I did a little research, which is my second-favorite thing to do (my favorite thing is to do a lot of research) and found out that my plants not only don’t need the love I was giving them, but due to the humidity of my apartment, need no love at all. The most informative article summarized them as plants that “thrive under neglect.”

Those three words seemed a little harsh. The gardening article was a little too personal. Because looking at the healthy plant refugee made me think of all the other terrifying ways I try to make the world better, and made me wonder if they had failed as conclusively. The middle school girl I mentored, the birthday card someone at work asked me to sign, that blind French man I tried to help in the subway and ended up getting us both lost in a corner because I didn’t know the French word for “turnstile.” And the woman in Namibia I bought a cow for last year. Looking at my plants made me sure things with that cow must have gone horribly.

The list of well-intentioned things I had done during my life was suddenly disconcerting long.

Luckily less than a heartbeat later I had already thought of all the things I neglect every day. Thank goodness I didn’t knit any sweaters for those penguins, or remember to call my former roommate on her birthday. I’ve never played that game where you have to know vocab words to give people rice, and my mom wouldn’t let me be a Girl Scout. How many times had someone posted on Facebook about something where I needed to call a congressperson and tell them something was important to me, and I didn’t call them? That must have happened ten thousand times. 

So now I keep my plants by the window, untouched, unloved, and thriving, healthier than any plants I have ever had, after nine years of plant-ownership. I look at them every morning from a safe distance while I swallow a fistful of vitamins. As long as I don’t have too much of a hand in it, it’s going to be another great day.

These aren’t my plants, but I don’t have a good picture of my plants.

These aren’t my penguins either, but if they're yours I'd like to meet them.

Useful information if you hate spiders

I hope you never need to know how to not freak out about thousands of spiders in your apartment, but just in case you do.

1. Pretend they’re pets

My landlord doesn’t allow pets but I’ve found a genius workaround, spider pets. “Spider pets, spider pets, spider pets” I repeat to myself over and over again while I watch them crawl around in the shower or climb from the middle of the floor to the ceiling suspended in midair. These loving little adorable animals are under my care. I am so lucky.

2. Kill them

This seems in direct opposition to the first technique but it works just as well: spraying large amounts of poison on them or smashing them with my Doc Martens.

3. Think about bugs I don’t have

Last summer was the Summer of Millipedes which, as catchy as it sounds, was so horrible. Now the spiders eat the millipedes. They feast on them really, one millipede is like a table’s worth of steak for these spiders. So, good thing I don’t have millipedes anymore?

4. Have nightmares scarier than them

Last week I had a dream that I lost my face in an accident, and found a free face in the mail, but it was my coworker's face and the surgery went really wrong. Good luck scaring me now, spiders.

Here are pictures of apartments without spiders, to break up the text and to remind me to be thankful that at least I don't have cats.

How old were you when you got into jazz music

My friend Boaz won free tickets to a jazz festival. To me the coolest part about winning tickets to a jazz festival is telling people you won tickets to a jazz festival, but they usually respond with “How was it?” so we had to go. 

As soon as we got there I realized that maybe for Boaz the best thing about winning tickets to a jazz festival might be listening to the jazz music, which is another example of how interesting it is to be friends with people with very different opinions than you. 

I liked the woman at the beginning of the show because she had seven different singing voices, including that low voice people use when they do impressions:

My ad was for a race car. What was yours for?

And also I didn’t like this woman because I think she’s twenty-three which means she’s three years ahead of me in the “be a cool jazz singer with cool hair and white glasses” game. I lose that game every time.

Then that woman left (her name was Cecile McLorin Salvant) and more people came onstage and it got really LATE, like dark in the theater and the music got relaxing and I felt very warm and later Boaz told me the exact moment I fell asleep was during a very loud drum solo. Which seems like something an old person would do. But it also seems like something a newborn baby would do. So maybe I’m just staying the same age? 

Twenty-six is a pretty good age to stay. I have red glasses and I’ve been practicing singing jazz music in the shower every day.

A short list for my landlord

My landlord is super great but emailing him about problems in my apartment always makes me nervous for some reason. So I’m hoping he’ll just find this here and save me the trouble.

1. The wall in the bathroom is falling. Does that make sense? I don't know how else to describe it, but it would be definitely be great if you could come look at it.

2. Also the faucet water sprays sideways instead of down. I know this seems more in the realm of a physicist than a landlord but I thought I’d tell you about it to see if there’s anything you can do.

3. One of the heaters doesn't turn on. This barely made the list because

4. the other heater won't turn off. So that sort of evens things out. Ignore this part of the list please.

5. There’s something horribly wrong with my freezer - I’ll put an entire brand-new container of ice cream in there and it's gone within hours.

6. I still notice the same number of spiders, and that’s great, but lately they seem - less spidery. Like they're not making webs with the same zeal they used to. 

7. This one involves the windows. They used to stay light until at least eight, sometimes even nine, and lately they’re not working at all. Yesterday it was completely dark by six, which seems insane and obviously extremely urgent.

8. I got new dark-wash jeans and they stained the tops of my white tennis shoes blue.

9. Sometimes, at the bus stop or in the elevator or line at the grocery store I’ll say something to a stranger but a bit too quietly, and I think my voice blends into the air around us and they don’t respond. I don’t know if they’re ignoring me or if I need to say it again louder. I think I just need to say it again louder, but I wish I knew for sure.

10. There is a cat in the neighborhood with thumbs. Have you ever seen a cat like that? It’s beautiful, I’m obsessed with it. I don’t have any photos because it’s so blurry (not in real life, just in photos) but here are some other cat thumbs.