Getting Stung by Bees

1. I spent seven years in the absolute center of the baby universe (Park Slope) and then I had a baby and moved out. 2. Nobody I know growing up was allergic to peanuts or even thought about it as a possibility, unlike, say, penicillin or getting stung by a bee. 3. Next time this week I’ll be in London. 4. My nieces are 3 ½ and 5 years old, which makes them full kids now and no longer babies or even toddlers. This is yet another adjustment for me to make. Being an aunt to babies almost feels like you can pretend you are a sister to a teenage mom. 5. Tomorrow my dog Sky moves on to her next adventure in life. I’ve become one of those awful people who have a baby and give up their dog. No matter how complex and nuanced the confluence of factors that led to this point, the end result is the same. Every time I am about to write the new owners and explain all these complicated reasons I stop myself because everyone has reasons for why they do what they do. 6. Last night my parents said they slivered into little balls on the bed so Sky could take up as much room as she wanted. 7. Number 5 coupled with the fact that I have unwittingly become an office drone makes me a lot more forgiving of people who get beaten down and give up their ideals and go into pure survival mode. 8. Thinking about how we are not the people we dreamed we would be makes me think back to all those late-night high school conversations with my best friend Margaret, from whom I’ve been somewhat estranged. 9. I like the peacefulness of the nighttime routine with Wally and yet lying on the bed in the dark listening to lullabies I often grapple with the most morbid, terrifying sense of loss. 10. It’s true the more you have to do the more you get done. 11. In checking our email again and again and again-what are we looking for? (Train running local; foot of snow expected tonight.) 12. I miss Park Slope, but if I’m honest with myself, I have to wonder: would living there now feel like living out the past? Things happen, and then you have to accept them. There’s this delay where, even after they’ve happened, you can push off, hold at bay, the reality of them, the implications. I guess you could call this denial but I think it’s something else. Moving, people dying, bosses not liking you, parents suddenly leaving the house where you grew up after 26 years, apartments that don’t allow dogs, always being exhausted but refusing to go to bed even one minute earlier. I think it's logical that you shouldn’t go to bed on the same day you woke up. 13. The last few times I’ve seen my brother-in-law he’s been in a great mood, offering to burn discs of music that I like. 14. One other problem now is I keep thinking about everything in terms of infinity. 15. Sometimes it’s not just the day of the week I can’t remember, or the date, or the month, or the year but the decade, the century, the millennium. I suspect this is a common problem. Lately more routine things have been getting more routine, like running out of milk, getting woken up by a fog horn, or seeing someone you know at a farmer’s market and having them give you a blank, unamused, off-center look when you express surprise in the fact that potatoes and other root vegetables are best in early spring.