jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

We often order dinner from a Chinese restaurant we’ve never seen. We’ve probably got about 30 takeout menus from various establishments close enough to want to swing by and drop us dinner. A few of them I suspect exist only in basements or family kitchens. Which is, frankly, fine with me. So one day our Chinese order appeared with both the Lotus menu attached, but also one for a Mexican restaurant. My supposition is that the Chinese restaurant (or basement) owners are trying a new angle to appeal to our largely Dominican neighborhood. I guess they felt that a combo menu wouldn’t work (Clearly they’ve never heard of Chico and Chang’s in Atlanta.) so they simply invented a new restaurant.

Damon’s a huge fan of Mexican food, so we decided to give them a call. Here is how my vegetable enchilada appeared:
A flour tortilla folded in half, cheddar cheese melted over the top. When I opened it up to see what kind of vegetables I got I found: broccoli, onion, crinkle-cut carrots, napa, and snow peas.

So… not really an enchilada and not really Mexican. It is, in fact, exactly what a Chinese person might make for you if you asked Mexican food. But the truth is that I like cheese and tortillas and all of those veggies. So ultimately I found it pretty tasty, and we’ll probably call them again.

In other news, I’ve made some changes to my Friends list. I had a lot of feeds coming in from large sites (Dooce, Cute Overload, etc) that amuse me, but were also crowding out the pages and making me miss posts from actual humans who are personally interesting to me. So most of those biggies have been either moved over to Bloglines or eliminated. It’s still a work in progress (I’m easily distracted) but I think I have it down to the point where I can better keep up.

I got my swap books a few days ago, and am digging in with abandon. Right now I’m loving a collection of essays called, “Why I’m Like This.” Delightful.

Here’s my dilemma… I can’t find the note that came with the books. I thought the LJ handle was “Jessity” but that’s not panning out. Can anyone point me in the right direction to extend my thanks? And of course I want to read this person’s journal, because we like some of the same books.

I can’t give an update on moldgate because a) there’s not much new to tell and b) because if I do the waves of anxiety and anger radiating off me might level our few remaining good walls.

On a more positive note, the baby is still cooking along. This Sunday we’ll hit 37 weeks, which is officially full term. Woo hoo! I’m Braxton Hicksing away, which I know might mean absolutely nothing. But I like to believe my uterus is doing some serious training (unlike the rest of the body, which is mainly eating chocolate bars and watching While You Were Out).

Some of the loveliest of our lovely friends threw us a baby shower this weekend. (Hi Steakums!) and that was 100% fun. My only hangup was that so many people traveled to get to the party and I was craving long, uninterrupted time with each of them. On top of the good company we also got lots of fun baby gear. It’s all being generously held by our friends James and Charles in their non-contaminated apartment, but I can’t wait to get some quality time with each little jumper and toy. Oh, and we had quince paste. Seriously, the food could change your life.

I may have mentioned that Zoe-the-cat does not seem to have any idea changes are afoot. I always hear about perceptive pets who are fascinated with the growing belly. Not Zoe. And she thinks every new thing is for her. She slept in the bouncer for a while, but abandoned that once we put up the co-sleeper. It never fails to make me laugh when I peel an eye open in the middle of the night and see a newborn-baby-sized cat peeking back at me from the Arm’s Reach.

But maybe I’ve underestimated her. Because we recently got some photographic evidence of some cat/baby communion.

I’ve left enough time between posts that I’m having a hard time knowing where to begin.

The baby is knocking on the door with increasing frequency. Was it just a few weeks ago that each little bump, each potential wiggle, stopped me in my tracks so I could note each part of each sensation? Now he kicks and twists and fidgets all day, and I give my belly a few reassuring pats and keep on moving. I’m much relieved to know that he’s been head down for about two weeks now, and the midwife feels I’m too narrow to allow him another full turn. So that’s one fewer thing to worry about.

That’s good, since we still have a pretty decent list of things to worry about. The water saga has grown more dramatic, sadly. Still, no insurance company has said definitively that this one’s on them. The good news is that the co-op insurance is fretting over a pregnant woman in a mold-festering apartment and so they’ve decided that while they aren’t officially taking responsibility, they are going to move forward with abatement while we all argue about this. I managed to get a copy of a letter (I’m a good snooper) from their lawyer to the insurance company and the board basically telling them they might not want to fool around when there are potential health implications for a newborn baby. I’d think that was good advice whether I benefited from it or not. It may have been partially related to my shrieking into the phone at the building manager, “If my son so much as sneezes plaster dust I am going to OWN this building!!!!!!”

The reality is that I’m almost phobic about the idea of hiring a lawyer and will go through all kinds of contortions to avoid it. But it’s better I keep that piece of information to myself.

The best progress so far has been that on Thursday the co-op insurance broker sent out an internationally-recognized environmental scientist to check out our apartment. While he does work for the insurance company and not for us, he was also clearly a true believer and was feeling very protective of us. He stayed for five hours taking samples, photos and using some of the coolest equipment I’ve ever seen. At one point he was using a spectrometer and I said, “That looks like something out of Ghostbusters!” and he laughed and told me it was that very equipment used in the movie. Not his personal equipment, but the same models. He was unstintingly generous in allowing me to hover over him the entire five hours and ask question after question. It was like having Bill Nye drop by. One fun fact I learned is that we have competing mold colonies fighting it out for dominance right now. He also showed me how to leave what I would call a heat shadow on the wall and then run around and look at it on the spectrometer.

I feel so lucky he was here. And yet I will say that having someone like him around is a mixed blessing. He generously decided that he wanted to look at the whole apartment for all possible hazards rather than just for mold, just as a favor to the baby. Our apartment is almost 100 years old. So… it’s really a death trap of environmental hazards. Lead, silica, biohazards from pigeons outside our windows, mold…. it went on and on. Now things like my cheerful, latticed radiator covers look like leering bear traps just waiting to bite into my baby. But better to know than to not know.

After our big five-hour exam he said he was writing up a scope for the insurance company that emphasized the urgency of the repair and that it is unarguably unsafe for me and/or the baby to be in the apartment while any work was happening. I don’t know what they’ll do about that. Relocating us would be very expensive, so the co-op insurance may begin to balk and try to push it back on us. We’ll see early next week. But the work is probably going to take about four weeks. Several walls have to come down. The bathroom will be non-functional. And as part of the scope our scientist friend said he’s noting that he wants us moved out and we aren’t to be returned until all the work is complete and he’s brought back to test again. He’s an MD, among other degrees, and was explaining how a newborn has an incomplete immune system and so should not be exposed to even routine construction/painting/etc. So… I have all cross-able extremities working to keep away any big conflict over this. Steakums, it may be that you and Nik will be staying with us this weekend… somewhere other than here. But that’s okay, it will make it more cheerful to have you there. At least I know we aren’t coming to a full stop. An environmental construction company came by this morning at 7:45am with two industrial dehumidifiers which they’ve set up and left to run until Tuesday morning. I think it will be very exciting to open our electric bill next month.

I’m trying to be sane about the fact that we likely will not get to come home with our baby, but will be going to some sort of temporary housing. I don’t think there’s any chance of me getting to good sport territory. We may still lose quite a few precious things due to contamination, and I can’t imagine being comfortable being anywhere but in my own bed when I come back from the hospital. But… just trying to keep my eye on the goal, which is a safe place for a baby.

I feel dangerously close, or perhaps long past, to going on far too long about this. I’ll comment on one stroke of luck and the make a quick exit.

We just switched from Tivo to a DVR box through our cable provider. It seems when you switch boxes there’s a small grace period where you get all the premium channels. I’m sure they’ll cut us off any moment now, but last night and this afternoon I’ve been having a free film festival. So that’s a little gift out of nowhere.

And even better… next weekend is our baby shower and we can’t wait to see so many of our friends! It is possible I will force seconds and thirds and fourths of fruit salad in an attempt to prolong the pleasure of their wonderful and much-appreciated company.

I’ve written before about our plumbing problems. They continue. The good news is that we’ve figured out why our little interior pipes are acting leaky and sad. It seems that the claw feet for our solid ton (I think it’s made out of kryptonite) bathtub are more propped up against it than properly attached. So as it settles over the month it pulls the pipes, which bend and then weep water onto our floor. It’s good to know what the problem is, and we’ve got the building maintenance guy on proper soldering and then pipe repair.

This all seemed like a much bigger deal until Monday, when we were given a lesson in perspective.

**This story is, obviously, from my point of view. Others would likely tell it different. But I think it unlikely that anyone else is blogging this fascinating story.

Onward. Here’s the necessary context, and why this is specifically a New York story: We live in a co-op. Legally, that means we own shares in the corporation that is our building. Our shares give us the right to live in a specific apartment within the building. The building is run by a board of directors that makes all the rules for us. It’s kind of like a condo association, but with more power. For example: egregious rules violators can be forced to sell their shares and move. I’ve never seen that happen, but it is possible. One of the rules is that anyone needing plumbing or electrical work done must submit the plan to the board. The board then checks to make sure the plumbers are licensed and bonded, and that the plan is architecturally sound. It may seem a little repressive, but it prevents residents from users hack plumbers who do damage that extends past individual apartments. If that didn’t look like foreshadowing, look again.

So Sunday night around 11:30 everyone on the board (as Damon is) gets an email from the resident who lives directly above us saying: I’m having some plumbing work done tomorrow. Thanks!

That’s not okay. So the building manager is at her door bright and early to say, “Stop that! You know better.” So he makes her send her plumber away and reviews with her the required procedure.

It seems that what happened was that she sent her guy away, and told him to come back after office hours. So around 7 on Monday I hear the sound of metal banging on metal, and two minutes later Damon comes into the living room to say, “Hey, there’s water coming out of our light socket.” Damon runs upstairs to tell them what’s going on, to which he gets, basically, the “nuh-uh” argument. So he came back down and we called the building manager. By the time the right people had been tracked down on a Monday night it was nearly 11 and water was trickling both from the socket and the light switch. Which I’m pretty sure can kill you. So the maintenance guy shows up and tells them to knock it off immediately. When they refuse he has to threaten to call the police and have the plumber forcibly removed. That does the trick. He turns off the water to that apartment.

I won’t go on with each details. The quick cut to the ending is that it seems that while her water has been turned off to the bathroom, her plumber (who apparently forgot to turn the water off before he started banging on the pipes) damaged some of the pipes in her floor/our ceiling. Probably a ripple effect of something he damaged closer to the surface. Now on Saturday we still have water coming out of every electrical outlet, including filling up our light fixture every day. The ceiling and two walls are peeling, cracking, and badly water stained. There’s a hole in the ceiling where new plumbers attempted to reach the leaks, but failed. And the nursery wall, which is adjacent to the bathroom, is completely destroyed. It looks like one huge water spot. It’s cracking all over and the baseboard has pulled away. And, oh, it smells awful. Our building manager said it’s a toss up at this point as to whether that adjoining wall (which is the tiled bathroom wall on the other side) will be salvageable or will have to be totally rebuilt. Next stop is to tear up her entire bathroom floor to try to access the leak. In the meantime, all bathroom business has to be conducted with the help of a flashlight because we’re afraid of the building bursting into flames if we use the soaked electrical wiring.

Did I mention that I’m eight months pregnant? Because while I’m doing my best to keep a sense of humor about the whole thing (and knowing we won’t have to pay for any of it helps) I am eventually going to snap. It will not be okay with me to bring home a newborn while construction and painting is going on in our 800-square-foot home. No no no no no.

This is the kind of conversation we have when I go to check on him:

Jillian: Here’s some medicine. Can I get you anything else?
Damon: I’m thirsty.
Jillian: Do you want some Gatorade?
Damon: No. But I want something really cold.
Jillian: Juice? Ice water? Lemonade?
Damon: Gatorade.