So don’t let the blue sky in the photo above fool you. It is frigid. Cold, cold, cold. A couple of days ago New York woke up to “4 degrees, feels like -15 degrees. ” I’ve been staying with Sean and his three roommates who all head off to work in Manhattan every morning. As one of the roomies was heading out that particular morning I said “Don’t take any deep breaths, ha, ha, ha!” We both chuckled and she went on her way. About an hour later I decided to brave the cold to walk a block down to my new favorite coffee shop Marcy and Mrytle which since coming here has become a part of my morning routine getting two drip coffees and a couple of pastries (one for me and one for Sean of course). The second I walked outside and the cold hit me, my first inclination was to do exactly what I told the roomie not to do…..I took in a nice deep breath and about halfway through it my lungs said “Stop! No! Uh uh, this is not a good feeling!” So as I started to walk down the street I tried to go with shallow breathing, which only resulted in the desire to take more deep breaths. Ten seconds in my nose started to ice over and twenty seconds in I found out that when you buy a stocking cap for $10 at Daiso in Japan you get what you pay for as my ears joined my nose in becoming ice sculptures. Luckily it was only a block to the coffee shop so my facial appendages (is that a thing?) had not fallen off just yet.
For the past week I have been staying with Sean and helping him out as he recovers from his ankle surgery. Sean lives in a third floor apartment in the historic Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Sean and his roommates were nice enough to allow me to stay in the apartment. So I stayed in Sean’s tiny room as his roommate for ten days. At first we pulled out a full size air mattress but when I laid it out it covered the entire floor so Sean, who sleeps on a futon couch in couch mode, would be trapped. It’s always difficult to traverse an air mattress with crutches….just sayin’. Option Two was a single sized airbed that had been left in the closet by a former roommate. The perfect size for Sean’s room, stretching from his futon to his closet but leaving room for Sean to get in and out. I plugged it in and inflated it, ready and hopeful for a restful night’s sleep after being in the air for 24 hours.
You know, there is usually a reason people leave stuff behind when they move. Either they are absent-minded or in a hurry and don’t check the closets, or the stuff they leave behind doesn’t work. I found out that it was the latter in the case of the airbed around three o’clock in the morning when I rolled over and the airbed unceremoniously deposited me on to the floor. It had lost maybe half it’s air so it was acting like an out of control, half-filled waterbed from the 70’s. I didn’t want to re-inflate it because it sounded like a vacuum cleaner and I did not want to disturb poor Sean who was going into surgery the next day. No, the airbed and I were going to have to come to an understanding. I tried to gently lie down on it and found myself on the edge looking up at it. I was on my right side so I attempted to wrap my left leg and left arm up and over so I could lift myself into the middle. It was like wrestling a crocodile, and losing badly. At that moment I was so glad I had not chosen crocodile wrestler as a profession since I am not very good at it. I had similar experiences in the gym when I would attempt to do crunches on one of those massive inflatable grey balls and I would end up rolling out of control backwards with no way of stopping my fall except for my back hitting the ground.
I was determined to not let the airbed beat me. This time I came at it from a standing position, bending over and strategically placing my hands to create balance and equilibrium on the airbed so the air was evenly distributed. This harkens back to my one time trying to standup on a paddleboard which was a similar dynamic except when I was paddleboarding I was face planting into the warm water of the Indian Ocean whereas here I had nowhere to go but the hardwood floor, the closet door or the wall. My hands were in good position. I could hear Sean’s gentle breathing as he peacefully slept oblivious of the mighty struggle that was happening just inches away from him. With one graceful motion (my words), I flung my legs in the air like a gazelle prancing through the Serengeti then bringing my legs down ever so gently on to the airbed again, looking for that equilibrium….success! Then with one fell swoop I lowered my arms and legs, splaying them out evenly across the bed and having the sensation that from above I probably looked like one of the many flattened frogs I have seen walking along the country roads of Bali (I am pretty sure our road was the inspiration for Frogger). I lie there basking in the victory yet afraid to move lest the airbed take it’s vengeance and launch me once again onto the floor. I closed my eyes and was able to get another hour or so of restful sleep in my frogger position.
Over the next week I perfected this dance, achieving a truce with the airbed and becoming quite adept at getting on and off. Whenever I needed to get up in the middle of the night and I was on my back, I would raise my left arm in the air, swing it down and just ride the wave down, ending up on my hands and knees. I won’t provide a visual of me standing up from my hands and knees because, well, it was never pretty. As I went through the week there were a few miscalculations, like mistakenly performing the left arm maneuver with the right arm sending me into the wall where I was smooshed like a bug on a windshield. But those were few and far between. Oh, and Sean is doing great. Much more to discuss about the trip to the Big Apple. Right now I am flying back to Bali. Never thought I would look forward to two long flights so I could get some rest.
