Bloo

Laila had a doctor's appointment downtown today, so after their appointment they came to the office to see everyone. The last time she was here, she was still a toddler and we were trying to get her to walk. Now, she's in her shy phase and we were trying to get her to actually say something.

First, the good news--the doctor says that Laila is healing well and she's now cleared to do flips (but still no spins), and if she keeps healing like this she'll be fully healed sometime in May. Just need to keep on her to make sure she doesn't climb on too many things, because if she hits her head too hard she'll end up with a skull fracture.

Anyway, sashagee brought Laila to the building and, in contrast to how things were during the Plague Years, they just waved me in and took me at my word--though in fairness, I had given a nengajо̄ to the receptionist so they knew my family by appearance already. We went up and showed Laila around, one of my co-workers gave her an apple and another one gave her a little clapper toy. Laila's in her shy phase so she quietly said "hi" and "thank you" and waved at people. Unfortunately some of her biggest cheerleaders weren't in the office, but she'll be back in the summer for another visit!

After we the visit was done Laila was very hungry, so we went down to the lobby again. There had been a miscommunication between sashagee and I about when we were going out to lunch--she thought I meant today when I meant tomorrow--but I suggested going to the work canteen. Originally I thought I would have to go up there and bring their orders down, but I asked the security guard if I could bring them up and she just waved dismissively and said, "Sure," which is pretty convenient but definitely makes me feel a little less safe! We went up to the dining hall and I picked up my lunch I had already ordered, paneer from a place called The Clove, and sashagee ordered a pastrami sandwich and we sat down and ate. Laila ate all the toppings and none of the bread from her half of the sandwich, but she was happy when the man working the register gave her a free rice krispy treat that they had left over at the end of the day. My paneer was fine, not great, but fine, and I threw it in the "okay" category of the restaurant lists.

After that, I walked sashagee and Laila to the L and they went home!

Oh, almost forgot to mention--there was a "Tea Lab popup" at work today, which meant that I got to go into a room and make a few teabags that I can take home. I just made ones with green tea and added spearmint, rosehips, lavender, and dandelion in various proportions. I'm going to take them home and have them in the morning with my fish, rice, and pickles for breakfast.

Congratulations, mabown and alainamwhite!


The whole family received an invitation to the wedding, including Laila, but for obviously hospital-related reasons not all of us could go. We discussed it among ourselves and decided that I would go as the family representative, but it did mean I spent quite a bit of my catch-up-with-friends time explaining just why it was that my family wasn't there.

ping816 officiated the wedding, which consisted mostly of the vows. I admit that I was expecting some kind of reading, especially when alainamwhite showed up in a black wedding dress, but there was not. ping816 read the ritual about marriage being a sacred bonding of love, alainamwhite recited her touching vows about how mabown taught her that its okay to be excited for your passions and you don't need to try to lock in to some concept about what being an adult is like, mabown protested that he had to follow that and recited his own vows, ping816 pronounced them married, and they processed out. It took maybe fifteen minutes. Straight to the point--the bonding of two individuals in holy matrimony.

After we left and waited for the reception room to be prepared, I mostly chatted with shane.suydam and his wife meaghan.figg, and later with kati.smith.211, mostly about our respective children because that's what parents do when they meet up. It was mostly talking about Laila because everyone was worried about her, so I gave an update on her condition, mentioned that she was scheduled for surgery on Monday, and that the doctors were hopeful that the surgery would really help. meaghan.figg offered to buy us dinner when we all got home, which was extremely kind of her--Mishkan did something similar for us when Laila had her spasms--and I'll definitely take her up on that. Otherwise, we drank the extremely strong drinks that the bartenders mixed up and when the doors opened, we went in.

I did learn that shane.suydam and his wife meaghan.figg live in my parents' town, about two blocks away, so we'll have to drop by next time we're in the neighborhood!

I was not seated with any of the aforementioned people inside, though I was seated with MomoManLove and johanna.jones.127, so they're who I chatted with while I ate the fish and drank the (delicious) wine on the table. I ended up dancing with johanna.jones.127 as well, when she, starting with her boyfriend, went down the men at the table and all of them turned down her offer to dance until she got to me. sashagee was surprised that I was willing to dance, too--after one of our first nights out she told me she had never dated a man who danced. Then I told her I had taken swing-dancing lessons during the swing dancing craze of the 90s. Sadly, there were no swing songs at the wedding. The music during dancing was mostly pretty conventional, actually, which I was surprised about since the music during dinner was mostly chamber instrumental covers of horror movie songs.

Since it's a wedding and therefore there were dozens of people to talk to, I didn't really get to talk to anyone for very long, and a lot of what I did talk to people about was Laila, but it was really nice to catch up with everyone. I learned that seloy had gotten married and ran into smtemp for the first time since the Plague Years (she's moved up to Wisconsin). I got to see kati.smith.211's five-year-old use up her energy by running circles around the table she and her parents were sitting at, proving that it's not just Laila. And I got to speak briefly to both mabown and alainamwhite and congratulate them on their wedding! It was a lovely night, though I always had a bit of worry about Laila in the back of my mind.

When I left, two women got out of the Lyft that I was getting into and one of them said:

"You look like an Irishman at an Italian club.

Evidence of his foul presence:


Or perhaps I should say...fowl presence?

A pigeon has decided that it wants to just hang out near our back door, in the rafters of the roof above our back stairwell. It's not nesting there, as far as I can tell, since there's no nest in our planting pots nor up on the rafters. It's just found its favorite spot and sits up there often, and of course, wherever a bird habitually sits, the ground below becomes a toilet. There's a ton of bird poop all over our back stairwell now and it's too cold for me to easily go out and clean it up.

I've taken to using a paintroller poll to just periodically go out and poke the pigeon when it's sitting up there in the hope that if I make staying near our door too annoying, it'll give up and hang out somewhere else. Watch this space to see if that happens.