Nobody

Knowing my parents' summer plans, I don't think I'll want to attend the full vacation with them. I don't know yet if I'll want to attend any of it with them. They're staying in a town a half-hour's drive from Beacon, which is a pleasant enough train ride, so I'm thinking maybe three days, tops, would be okay.

Last time they did this, I only stayed a handful of days. It's not unprecedented in our vacation plans. I'll probably want to get out of New York City in its sticky season, and knowing I'll have a limited amount of time there from the get-go is probably one of the better things I can do to be able to enjoy myself. I've seen what happens when it's all on my parents. It doesn't end well.

In helping one of my clients sort through several decades of personal photos, we found the Polaroids of the man sitting on a bed and masturbating with his head out of frame came with a note where he extorted his adoration for her and his desire to masturbate while she watched. Our best guess is he followed her to her building and gave the doorman some story about knowing her and needing her apartment number to get back in touch.

I didn't get a good look and they're long gone by now. I didn't ask why she'd kept them these last few decades or why she decided now was the time to throw them out, either. But the story lives on, and proof positive unsolicited dick pics have been around for as long as the technology for the pics themselves. It was something I'd suspected and in an odd way, it was nice to see the firsthand confirmation.

Only slightly more surprising was seeing someone else pick a cigarette pack out of the trash, fish through the pack, pull out the last one in there, toss the pack away, and start smoking it. I didn't stay to watch, knowing it'd be rude to stare, but boy, what an addiction that is.

There's been a downpour on and off tonight, hitting a couple hours ago and then coming back loud enough I can't miss it. There was a little snow left in the parks and at the very edges, but this is going to see to everything. The feeling of knowing this is exactly it, more than it felt on Sunday, is somehow both peaceful and unsettling. There's an acceptance and a sense of gratitude of not having missed the moment. It's not something I'm eager to seek out, and it's one I can hold onto and sit with a while.

I put in three bids for this year's Fandom Trumps Hate, two for beta readers and one for a vid. Whether they'll end up getting outbid remains to be seen. I've got at least a day to figure out what my absolute maximum collective bid should be and which ones to prioritize. Not something to think about for the rest of the night, at least.

It might've been the last snow of the season this morning. A light dusting, enough to make me think a coat would've been nice and not too much to make me need more than a sweatshirt. It was nice to feel the last bits of cold, especially since the sun was out a couple of hours later, so nothing much stuck around. Few people were at the market, which made it easier - I haven't been to the Sunday one in a while, and as anemic as this time of year is for produce, it's nice to see some depth of color when it comes to the root vegetables.

In other shopping news, from working in assorted doctor's offices, I found a good quality bandage brand, and online shopping being what it is, I had to resort to eBay for a couple boxes. Most medical supply places call for a minimum order of significantly more than a couple boxes of bandaids, which I understand, and convenience pushes me towards eBay because that's all I need right now. It was that or Amazon, and I'm slightly more trusting of eBay as a general institution.

Based on the size and the chirps, I'm pretty sure the bird I saw perched on the rooftop structure earlier today was a peregrine falcon. I didn't have anything to take a picture, and I didn't see it fly off to be able to check the silhouette, so I'm only working off what I got from the ground across the street.

It was hard to miss. At least, I found it hard to miss. There wasn't enough noise to drown out the chirps, which were distinctive enough I knew something had to be around. I deliberately stopped a little while to look at it, in case anyone walking by would stop to see what I was looking at, or ask me what I'd noticed. There weren't many people, and of the people that came, neither of them bothered. I don't know what was on their minds.

This morning in the gym, a woman some decades my senior was doing a virtual training session with another woman in between our age brackets, though closer to her than me. I could hear and see them and they could see and hear me, but it wasn't an issue - I just grabbed a kettlebell and moved to the other side of the room.

The trainer let out a gasp and said, "Look at that girl's hair!" She'd seen my braid hanging down, and couldn't help but comment.

I won't lie: it's pretty wonderful to have something about myself that catches complete strangers' attention in a charming, positive way. And I won't lie: it was a superb moment to hear someone call me a girl. Affirming and euphoric.

Between the train being a while and the train being delayed, I arrived just in time to be fashionably late: I walked into the party just as the guest of honor was being introduced. The woman of the hour, a newly published author, a friend of the people whose library I was hired to organize who decided to invite me to the book party as a parting gift. I was the last person to arrive and comfortably below the average age of the guests, and even recognized a handful of people from overlapping social Jewish circles. I felt nervous about being there until the man who was introducing the author talked about how her memoir was both nostalgic and sad, not a combination that comes up - and I waved my hand to get his attention, because I knew exactly what to say.

I quoted Anya Von Bremzen to say the phrase she used for that sensation was poisoned Madeline.

When I say the host, author, and room were suitably pleased and impressed at the phrase, that also says a lot about the rest of the guests at the party.

What's even better is that my interjection wasn't my high point of the party. As much fun as it was to be invited to that kind of thing, as deeply as I enjoyed putting some goat cheese inside dates for an amazing snack, I mostly attended to network. I knew my clients, I knew who their friends would be, and I worked that as much as I could. I introduced myself and said, "I'm the librarian." I explained how I'd come to be at the party. I hobbed, I nobbed, I was suitably impressive. I said, "My card," and handed over a business card. I commented to one of the hosts that if all that came out of it was being able to say I'd said "My card" it was worth the evening. It was an amazing feeling to do that. So very grown up.

I wore one of my nicer dresses, and it definitely helped me feel like I belonged there. After a while, the feeling simply settled in. I chatted about fiction, about the philosophy of library science and the psychology of letting go of books, about cakes and baking, about public transportation. I said cabs were the luxury of the people and that they were union. I joked about wanting to show off my party trick but since the party was over, too bad. I nibbled and had some wine, and took some grapes home at the hosts' insistence, though they didn't have to try very hard. I took a bike back instead of using the subway or walking, and it was the best way to come down from the elevated state. Not all the way down, though - it'll be with me for a while longer, and I'm doing what I can to savor it for as long as it lasts.