Rats and Promises

Three days ago, I was planning to go the gym. There is a pseudo-pilates class there that I love. It's pseudo because it's called Ballet Body Yoga Mind, but it also incorporates many of the moves of Pilates, yoga and ballet training. I like it; the teacher is a very chill Park Slope woman with undyed hair and baggy clothes. She is soothing. However, I have not been to the gym in several weeks and I felt very tired and hungry. With the excuse of my healing sprained foot I decided to curtail my plans and walk over to read in Prospect Park until dusk, then grocery shop and eat.

On my way to the park, I passed the Grand Army Plaza park which is actually very forest-like and dense. It's also a rat paradise land. I saw several rats crawling in and out of the fence cruising over to the wire garbage cans. One garbage can had SEVEN rats crawling in and out of it and up and down it. My mother once said that rats are the wild animals of NYC. With the addition of pigeons, I would concur. Anyhow, I sat on one of the park benches (as far away from the garbage as I could position myself) and read my copy of A Streetcar Named Desire. The garbage can on the other side of the park bench had about four rats crawling in and out of it. Five pages later, a jogger came by and she was side-tracked by the number of rats. She was very disgusted. I laughed aloud and realizing that I was appearing insane, I decided to give up my attempt to brave the rats for my piece of wilderness and forge ahead to the Park Slope Food Co-op.

There I learned that my Work Alert had transformed itself into a Suspension, but I did have a 2 week grace period to shop in. Awesome. I felt a little stressed out by this circumstance, so I have promised myself that I will do my make-up shift this Monday night after my regularly scheduled monthly shift as a "Food Processer." Food Processing is a nice shift for me, because you lurk in the basement and weigh almonds, tea, dried fruit and slice cheese. Then you package everything and weigh and label it. It's fairly boring, but you are not around the frenetic shoppers and sometimes you can illegally sample food. I am very responsible and usually I don't miss my shift, because I obey rules.

I missed my last Food Processing shift because I was on a wedding odyssey. I went to my cousin's wedding in Sun River, OR. It was an incredibly fun wedding. Stay tuned for the upcoming blog entry giving you exclusive coverage of the Kelly-Michael wedding. I've been to 4 weddings this year. So far. And there's a fifth one that happened today in Chicago, however I couldn't make that one. I also went to Andrea Schripsema's wedding near Bloomington, IL. She didn't have a wedding website for her wedding, but she did have boat rides on a lake and a campfire. We've known each other since we were infants. I owe my readers many blog entries, and I solemnly promise to do some make-up blog entries that will take you back in time to cover some of the weeks of my life you have missed out on. (Insert emoticon of tounge sticking out here.) One thing, I should confess is that I have become a chat monster. If you're on gmail, won't you IM with me?