jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

Last night my best friend’s young cousin and her guy friend spent the night with us. She’s about to graduate from Wellsley, he goes to West Point. Soon she’ll be traveling, and won’t live in Connecticut anymore, so they wanted a chance to hang out. In typical college-kid fashion, she didn’t call me until Friday night to ask if they could come Saturday and crash. But the truth is I didn’t really care. She’s a great young woman, a total pleasure to have around and I meant it when I told her she could come stay here anytime. Which is hilarious because now I think she’s coming back on Tuesday with a girlfriend. And that’s fine. There’s a good chance our friend Bart will be here Tuesday and Wednesday night for a Broadway audition Wednesday afternoon. We can comfortably host four (if with little privacy, as it involves the living room couches if we go over two) so it will all work out even if everyone comes.

This is what really marks the beginning of the pleasant-weather season in New York City — the houseguests return like swallows to Capistrano.

By the time it got cold last year I was starting to despair because it felt like we had guests week after week after week. It was hugely diffcult because it wasn’t like the same people kept coming back, it was always someone different. Someone we hadn’t seen in too long. Someone who’d spent precious time and money to get here. Someone who deserved our full and energetic attention. And after a while we really began to wilt.

But winter came and everyone started saying, “We’ll come in the spring.” We got a few months off to recharge, with no more than a few drop-ins. Now people are starting to send the emails or leave the messages and we are once again delighted.

So my advice is that if you’re coming, come early when we’re fresh. If you wait until October you may find we’ve planned a rousing weekend of watching Netflix movies and eating Chinese delivery for you.

And as someone who now has some level of hosting expertise, let me offer these two bits of advice/pleas to all houseguests everywhere.
1. Unless you are going to be totally out of your element, go ahead and make plans that don’t involve me. Telling me you’re off to have lunch with an old college friend is what allows me to get some down time and/or work done.
2. Make yourself at home. Really. If we’re close enough for you to stay with me, we’re close enough for you to rummage through my refrigerator, answer my phone, borrow my hairbrush, etc, without asking. It’s so much easier for me if you feel comfortable.

I feel we are crossing some sort of line. Yuppie-hood? Urban trendiness? Lunacy? Today I left a message for a nationally-ballyhoo’d animal behaviorist to make a house call to try to get Zoe and Fat Sam to play nice. It’s one of the charms of living in New York that people like him are our neighbors. This guy lives in Brooklyn, which is what makes this all possible. As any reasonable person might imagine, this is not going to come cheap. Not at all. But we made a commitment when we took in Fat Sam. We love him and we’re going to do everything we can to make it work. I mean, who could give up a 20-pound, 6-toed, 7-clawed cat who high fives? Another NY pet benefit… Damon and I went out to dinner tonight. After we ordered I remembered that we meant to buy a new cat toy, but I knew everything would close before we finished. So I ducked out of the restaurant and was back with bunch of feathers bungeed to a fishing pole before my salad had arrived.

On an unrelated note, I’ve started reading a book called The Scalpel and the Butterfly which is subtitled “the war between animal research and animal protection.” This is an intricately complicated issue for me. I stopped eating meat when I was 18 in protest of animal processing. I felt then, and feel now, that humans are definitely at the top of the food chain. But that the way in which animals are raised, harvested and slaughtered is not defensible. But I am no hero. I try not to buy or use animal products, and fail several times a day. Some of my shoes and bags have leather parts. And I won’t even begin to get into all the other ways animal products sneak in. I do eat dairy, but only free range and organic. Except, of course, when I’m going to Baskin Robbins. So, again, not perfect. But I care. A lot.

When I was a little girl my Mom (probably almost randomly) hung a wooden plaque in my room with a picture of a little girl surrounded by field animals. A prayer was inscribed, “Dear Father, hear and bless thy beasts and singing birds. And guard with tenderness small things that have no words.” As a small kid with a big vocabulary, I was always enormously moved by the idea of creatures so helpless as to be deprived of speech. Talking was (is) my only natural defense as I am not particulary strong or brave or fast. So that’s my pop psychology explanation for why I feel a deep affinity for animals. But that affinity isn’t imagined. Your pets would love me. I can make your dog stop jumping without yelling at her. Your cat will respect and like me.

Anyway, I’ve made my point. And yet. My best friend has MS. I will go to the mat loudly denouncing most forms of animal research. And I’ll start with shameful things like cosmetic testing. But at some point when you get down to those last few cases I start to get very uncomfortable. Because my best friend has MS.

I just got off the phone with my Mom. She’s so far away. I wish she were here, or I were there. I wish I could work in Florida like I can work here. And that I thought living in Florida sounded better than it does. I hate being away from my family.

So in the midst of the tooth crisis, which I promise will begin to recede in my postings shortly, ovulation came and went. I spent my fertile days this month in a cloud of codeine. I’m disappointed, obviously.

I keep taking my emotional temperature as adoption becomes more of a possibility for us. So far I still feel fine about it. I have a little bit of concern that I can’t quite put my finger on. Something along the lines of people not viewing an internationally adopted baby (which is the choice we would likely make) as being as much ours. Not that I fear we would feel that way. But I wonder if there would be a slight dimming in the reaction of the people around us.

Of course in a few weeks we’ll be back to trying to get pregnant, so perhaps my tune will change. Except… I still think we might like to adopt if we choose to have a second kid.

Tonight I started making a list of what I want to make for Thanksgiving dinner. I haven’t gotten to cook my own Thanksgiving in about six years, so I’m very excited. Damon’s Mom, her boyfriend and possibly his sister and her new-ish baby will be coming to New York.

It could be really sweet and lovely, or it could be a terrible nightmare. But either way there will be creamed onions.