Week 8 of 2025

My friend and yoga teacher Margarita often has to remind me, “put your shoulders down.” Certainly when I’m feeling stressed, they lift higher and higher until it feels like they’re up to my ears. After this week, my shoulders are so tight, and they might as well be raised up above than my head.

Poppy, dear sweet stupid dog, ate a golf-ball sized tennis ball on Tuesday morning’s walk. We weren’t sure at first -- she’d picked it up, but I’d made her drop it, knowing it was a choking hazard. But she’d grabbed it again and carried it secretively in her mouth. I think, as we were entering the apartment building, she saw another dog and accidentally swallowed it. At least it was gone when we pushed the elevator button. We’d hoped she’d dropped it. An X-ray on Thursday, after a couple of nights of puking and some obviously increasing pain, indicated otherwise. She was whisked off to an emergency surgery -- “not a big deal,” the vet assured Kin, as removing toys from dogs’ bellies is apparently a very common procedure. But it was a big deal for us. We picked her up Sunday morning, and thanks to an incredible amount of pain killers and anti-anxiety medication, she’s been mostly out-of-it. She’s on the mend for sure -- quite a bit perkier today and a little mad that we aren’t going for walks. She has to wait 2 weeks -- or until the stitches come out.

And that’s a shame because the weather, just within the last few days, has suddenly looked like spring.

It’s been a long, cold, wet winter -- the weather, the mood of the nation -- and so the warmth of the sun feels exquisite. I’ll even do tomorrow’s speed workout outdoors instead of on the treadmill, which is exciting and intimidating as I find it easier to go quickly when the machine sets the pace. Oh, irony, eh?

Picking Poppy up from the vet on Friday morning scuttled the usual Friday workout (bike to the gym; squats and bench press; 40 minutes on the indoor track; bike home). Monday’s was altered by wind -- or at least, it was blowing so hard I opted to ride the bus rather than the bike down to Chelsea Piers. It was my first trip in a bus since congestion pricing went into effect here in the city. It was so fast. (It was also, to be fair, a holiday.) But, as of Wednesday, Trump has rescinded approval for the plan, so I’m sure traffic will fuck up Manhattan again and the MTA will still find itself struggling to maintain the crumbling infrastructure of the city’s public transportation system.

We had some visitors this week: my niece and nephew (and his girlfriend). I took them out to lunch on Thursday (while Kin was dealing with veterinary issues) at Kisa, a new restaurant modeled after the kind of place South Korean taxi drivers stop for food. It was excellent -- the food, the service. Probably one of the best meals I’ve had this year. Then we walked up to Veniero’s Pastry, sadly too early in the afternoon to sit down for coffee and cake so getting our cannoli, mousse, and tiramisu to go.

Burger League was at Le Rock this week, and I thought it was underwhelming. We ordered take-out on Saturday night too, scrapping plans to eat out with our friend Steve as we were nursing the dog and afraid to leave her home alone. This -- from Poulet Sans Tete -- was also a little disappointing. But maybe things just taste sad because, well, sad...

We’ve watched quite a bit of mindless TV this week, not really having the brainpower to focus on books. We did watch Nickel Boys this weekend, which was stunning. It’s my favorite Colson Whitehead novel, and I was very curious how the director was going to “pull it off” (if you’ve read the novel, you know what I’m talking about). But the film was even more daring and imaginative with its storytelling than I’d envisioned. I’d recommend folks watch it, but I think I’d say “read the book” first.

Speaking of books, I’m reading Emily Nussbaum’s Cue the Sun, which I mentioned in today’s Second Breakfast newsletter. Reality TV is a genre that’s long fascinated me -- I lectured on The Osbournes when I was the TA for the “History of Film” class at the UO; and I wrote conference papers on Joe Millionaire and on “spoiling” Survivor. But I hadn’t really thought about how much the genre influenced online culture -- “influencers” and whatnot. One of Garbage Day’s emails last week talked about influencers -- right wing and otherwise -- as petty-bourgeoisie; Trump’s shift from ruling by tweet to ruling by executive order; and the need to build new “mass appeal technologies” so as to tell different stories to the populace, who are bombarded with authoritarian messaging and actions but offered little alternative vision. I don’t know that I have any clear thoughts on this, now that I’ve started to type this out -- other than this all feels connected: reality TV, radical individualism and fame, and authoritarianism. I’m not sure that mass media is the way forward; but I know that, in some way, “better storytelling” has to be.

But then again, I’m a writer. I would say that.