Happy Days Are Here Again

So after months and months, I finally figured out how to recover access to this blog. Which should make it easier for everyone. Unless I screw it up again. Sigh...

New York winters are long and hard. Now, I know there are many places where winter is longer and harder. But most of those places are not pedestrian cities. Plus, I don’t live there. So I win.

It’s 78 degrees outside, I got my first pedicure of spring yesterday, and I’m wearing a pair of sandals that I dug out from under my desk. They’d been there since last summer. I got a salad for lunch, and I was going to eat it outside, but they haven’t put the summer benches out on Rockefeller Plaza yet. And a few of you have reminded me, rather vehemently I might add, that I’ve been remiss in my blogging, so I decided to take the time to do that.

This good mood and general bonhomie has been particularly hard-earned for me this spring. I’ve been sick. I mean really, really sick. Sicker than I’ve ever been. I know as an adult I’m not supposed to still be blaming things on my mom. But this one really is her fault. See, I went home for Easter. My dad hates strong smells, so my mom has taken everything smelly in the house—scent diffusers, a particularly horrific eucalyptus wreath—and stuffed them into my bedroom. I understand her rationale. That way she gets to keep it, but it doesn’t bother him. Everybody wins. Right? Wrong.

I slept one night there, and broke out in this full-blown asthma and allergies extravaganza that turned into a cold that took two weeks of doing nothing but going to work, antibiotics, cough medicine with codeine, 2 inhalers, and finally a heavy-duty dose of steroids to clear up. Now, I come from a family of the bronchially challenged. There’s always someone sucking on an inhaler, and when my nephews were little, every trip to the beach involved trekking up to first aid to plug in their nebulizers. But it’s still shocking when it happens to you.

After two weeks of this, this past weekend was the first time I actually felt like a human being. So I decided, as is my style, to ease back into a social life gradually—by drinking for about 12 hours on Saturday. Now, it wasn’t exactly my fault. See, I had a bridal shower that segued into a bachelorette party. And there was champagne punch at the shower. How much do I love champagne punch? And then there were wine tastings. And wine tastings. And wine tastings. And really I was just drinking to be polite. And then there was the wine in the limo. And a few pitchers of margaritas back at the house. And then I think some read wine when everything else ran out. But really—I was just being social. Isn’t that the rule? You have to keep drinking so the bride has company? I think that’s definitely the rule.

So here I am, warm again, social again, and back in the swing of things. Happy days are here again.