Hard Boiled

Random thoughts on an interesting day:
About five am, I was making breakfast and decided to make tomorrow's lunch at the same time. I've become increasingly adept at making food ahead of time. Sunday's lunch is egg salad w/cottage cheese, fresh parsley, celery seed, alfalfa sprouts and tomatoes. I hate making hard boiled eggs. My whole life I have never managed to figure out how to get the shells off without tearing some of the egg apart. Isn't that odd? And there is nothing in any of the (hmmmm) twenty five cookbooks I own that gives any hint as to how to manage the shelling better. I always guessed that it was just dumb luck or I wasn't waiting long enough to shell them or I was waiting too long ...arrrrgh.
So, it's five am and I put on the weather channel to see just how cold it's going to be. (I am going for a run in the pitch black before heading downtown to the lawyers and then over to the Marathon Expo.) The tv turns on on the Food Channel and, I kid you not, there is a little square blurb thing in the upper left corner of the screen that says: "Hard Boiled Egg Secrets: Next".
I sit down. I sip my coffee. I wait through three minutes of commercials for :tapes of the program I am watching. (Lydia's Italian Kitchen) Promos for the Food Channel (something about Chef Jeff or Chuck or Ermilio.) and an invitation to rent the most spectacular Wedding Reception Space in all of Brooklyn - the Something Something Hotel. Ahem.

The secret is an ice bath after they simmer, not boil, for ten minutes. Ay yi yi. An ice bath? It's too late to try it then. I head out and down and around and it's dark and cold and I'm still sick from Sunday and the radio won't get NPR and I'm sick about going to the lawyers and I am wondering if I wrote enough in my notes to her or too much or ..... I headed back to the house after the first three mile loop. I took a long shower. I put a note on A2k and headed downtown.

The first thing that strikes you when you are talking with a lawyer for an hour as opposed to talking to a therapist for an hour is that the more you talk in the lawyer's office the less you will find out. I think the opposite is true in therapy.
I talked a little. She read my notes. They were very good notes she said. I shut up. She versed me in the law. Many good verses. She told me that I didn't have to be L's friend if I didn't want to be. (Did I mention that my lawyer is ALSO a therapist?) That was a big relief to me. Friendly, yes, but,.... and this is the word she used:
hard boiled.
The little hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
(BTW: the only time I got verklempt (teared up) during the talk was when I was describing the support I had gotten from the lot of you on this website. I remain deeply moved by all your kind words and backing. I intend to write a poem: it will be called PERFECT STRANGERS.)

I left the lawyer's office. Ran to the ATM a block and half away and ran back with her first hour's wages: $350.00. Worth every frigging penny. Details to follow but she revealed several things I had no clue about re:taxes and all those mundane sorts of things with which I have no usual interest.
Every frigging penny.

I took myself to breakfast. Is it my imagination or is the whole world full of women coming on to me? I am seated next to a very attractive Hispanic woman. This is New York. Tables are only elbows width apart.
I am reading my newspaper. I am sipping the most delicious French Onion Soup trying hard to not sneak glances at her when she says "Excuse me. I need your help, please."
I look up. She has eyes you could dive into and swim until you drown, but I say "Sure. What is it?"
We talk. The man she has been with for twelve years is a liar and a cheat and she wants to tell the IRS on him.
(OK)
Please, would I write the address on this envelope so he won't know it was she who turned him in??
(She has a notice from the IRS to send to him that someone has reported lack of Tax Payments asking for an explanation from him to the IRS.)
(he should be thrilled.)
OH, I say, they will pay you for turning him in you know.
She doesn't want anything.
I am finishing my soup.
And he goes with other women when I am not at home.
I say...I thought about this..I don't believe he could be so stupid or so cruel. (I remember the Spanish word/slang for dope. It is Huevo -- egg.)
What a huevo he is, I say.
She laughs and then she starts to cry a little.
The waitress comes over to see what is what and brings my hamburger.
The lady has paid for her breakfast. ( a waffle? fruit? Coffee?)
She is calm now. Watching me eat a not very good hamburger.
Thank you, she says. um. I am staying near here at my girlfriend's apartment. You could walk me home if you like.
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I arrived at the Javits a little before two and signed in at the volunteer's office. I got a badge and a Marshall's placard to hang around my neck and then I guided, answered, urged, directed, pointed, indicated runners and their families through the process of getting their bib number and chip for the greatest race on earth. When I got to my first station the monitor wasn't working and I was disappointed, but then the video suddenly started playing. Good, I thought. It was a video describing the way the corrals will work at the start. It ends with a wonderful swelling of music. Beautiful.
Then, it plays again. About the 10,oooth time it plays, the swelling music isn't so swell.
I met Marge, the fake volunteer, she almost eighty years old and has figured out that most weekends at the Javits Center they need volunteers. Volunteers get no money, BUT they get a dinner ticket after five hours. Marge paced around the registration area for four hours and thirty minutes and then asked for her dinner ticket. We didn't see her again.
I liked volunteering for the Expo because it brought back the memories of last year and getting my bib and chip and kind of floating back to the city afterwards.
Some of the runners are hard boiled.
Some appear to be just as soft as kindergarten clay.
They will all trot their way home in their own way.

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I was in the subway. On the platform at 42nd waiting to go home when a guy with guitar started to play an upbeat version of Desperado complete with fast picking of the intro and finish. The twenty or so people on the platform with me listened or didn't listen until the last notes died and then did what any respectable New York Subway audience would do./...... nothing.
Nothing. Not a single clap, not a single 'right on', not a single nod of the head towards the guitar man. The guitar man who took it in stride that no one would ever acknowledge his existence just started playing "Trees blowing in the Summer's Breeze."
Hard boiled he, and hard boiled the folks on that platform, but they have to be, don't they?
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We walked to the corner together. There was a mailbox. She put the envelope onto the flap and let it slam shut. I said Good. That's done.
I gave her a hug, a long hug, I tried to squeeze some of my new hard boiledness into her. It felt like a hug that you'd give to someone you've known forever but that you knew you would never see again.

Joe(she told me, but I didn't get her name.)Nation

Now

http://www.myamericanprayer.com/video.html