By Rhonda Hansome
Well I’m still on the (4 a day until the Costco size container is empty) generic antibiotic (because I signed for a health plan from a guy on the street who yelled, “Hey, do you need medical insurance?”) Keflex, I copped just prior to hopping a plane to Cali.* Well, I’m still in Cali.
For some perverse reason I like writing Cali. I don’t SAY Cali, because hearing it come out of my mouth would reveal to me just how pretentious I aspire to be. My original plan was to fly from Cali to NYC on Tuesday. When storm warnings threatened I decided to be smart and split the Cali scene pronto; geez, that slang is so old it has a walker. Yes, in a strangely pro-active mode, I decided to cut 2days short my visit, to a beloved childhood friend living in San Francisco and thereby get a jump on severe weather predicted for travelers to the North East. After researching twenty different travel scenarios, offering only three possible and incredibly difficult to obtain flights; all three were summarily canceled due to Sandy’s determination to leave her mark in record books and the life of everyone she touched.
I am still in Cali, San Francisco where the entire town is in the grip of championship fever. Waitresses, bank clerks, nuns, and the newly born, all sport the ubiquitous orange and black of the triumphant Giants. The Market St. celebratory parade held on Halloween makes for a scene that Dali would accuse Fellini of plagiarizing.
Am I intrigued? Am I entertained? No - I’m sick!** The weather in San Francisco changes twenty degrees every hour. The natives seem just fine with the fluctuations but I did not get the memo that, in spite of the balmy hour of the day, I needed a scarf around my neck. So now, I’m sick with some kind of chest based coughing fit that flares only when I try to sleep or breathe.
Dear Reader***, I’m 5,000 miles from home. The NY subway system, I love to hate, is currently 800 hundred miles of flooded tracks with rats surfing on metro cards. Fortunate East coast residents were only buffeted by rampaging Super Storm Sandy. Those less fortunate lost loved ones and lifetimes, all swept away in the wake of ferocious wind and rain. The Jersey Shore has disappeared like the eponymous reality show.
San Francisco has its charms, but I want my inhaler, which I never think to pack when I travel****. I want to see my gentrified new neighbors, who never speak to me, every time they see me. I want to resume well-worn routines, like get my mail and oh so last century, rollerblade. I want to go home.
*See blog No Pictures Please!, for horrifying details of how and why I got my Cephalexin 500 MG prescription.
** Not anything to do with the asterisk above and Quasimodo reference in No Pictures Please!
*** All three of you.
**** Yeah, I actually needed and had not packed my inhaler on my visit to Israel last month.
Thank you Lisa for posting this for a technological Luddite, held hostage on the West coast by Super Storm Sandy!
You're welcome. I enjoy reading your blogs. Feel better soon!
rats surfing on metrocards is quite a vivid image! sorry you are feeling so lousy. it will hopefully be great to be back home. your mail and inhaler await your return.
great piece i enjoyed reading it
Very nicely written, even with all the complaints - so very heartfelt. Good Job Rhonda and I hope you've made it back here safely
I can relate, although I prefer a cocktail of amoxicillin and flagyl. Just got another root canal; the irony is that I'm LUCKY to be able to afford it. While freezing in the dental chair (why do endodontists need the COLD air on so high? For F's sake turn up the laughing gas instead!) the doc told me that my tooth was gently weeping, and all I could think of was that Beatle song...
I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my poor tooth gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my poor tooth gently weeps.
Again, great blog post.