November 30, 2010 - Breakfast

I need to go to the doctor now for my followup on my allergic explosion.

Last night I saw an old friend and his wife. I warned [Wife] not to come with me, and while she was initially resistant--she likes that couple--she finally came around. I'm glad I warned her, for on arrival at their place in Greenpoint, where they are housesitting while visiting the city, I was greeted by a baby, face smeared with avocado, grinning with great round soft cheeks, and for the next hour there was little else to talk about but itself, notes on the baby autopunctuated by a soundtrack of crawling stumbles and chawing and gurbling, baby putting baby feet inside baby plastic cups, baby making baby eyes at cat, baby smiling baby smiles and saying baby phonemes, making baby smells, until finally, after the Thai food, there was one horrible moment when my friend's wife, who is blameless, who is kind, who does not know about our situation, who has left her high-powered career so that she might give herself fully to baby, sipped her aperitif and told me: "We take pictures of him all day, and then we put him to bed and then we look at the pictures, and we say, 'Should we wake him up and spend more time with him?'" At which point we all gave each other strong hugs and I said goodbye and got on my bike for the five miles home, but right before the Williamsburg Bridge my rear tire blew out so that I would have an hour of walking, and waiting, and G train, to contemplate the lacks of my life, and when I saw, pushing my bike up the darkness of Metropolitan Avenue, a hipling holding up his smartphone to take a picture of a gray pigeon that was perched on a square metal trash bin, I admit to giving up, just a little bit, just giving up on a number of medium-sized things that I previously kept in my hand, and I went into the organic grocery and bought a nice big bag of pretzels and some beer for the ride home.

Weight: 318 lbs