Straight Talk

I've never actually been hit by a car before. Living in New York I was involved in more than a few driving do-overs, the first when a lorry truck tried to renegotiate it's spacial parameters into and over me, and most recently when trying to pull into bumper to bumper traffic I tried to assert myself a few inches into the driver in front of me. Still, 5 years of living in New York, and as a pedestrian, I've never even had a chance to shout obscenities at reckless New York drivers. Today though I unleashed a tirade of four-letter words I realized afterwards probably weren't all that familiar to the ladies who tried to run me down after rolling through a stop sign; but maybe the fact that I was straining to push the cars forward motion backwards- Superhero style and the hyper-active gesticulating at the stop sign she'd just driven by got my point across. Still I made a bit of a scene and even on a street with very little foot traffic I had earned myself an audience. It's one of those moments when time sort of stops and your head keeps repeating, a car is hitting me, a car is hitting me, but that doesn't compute because there is a stop sign and I was in the road before she got here, the car is still hitting me, doesn't she see me, I'm right here in front of her, why does she keep driving into me? After my denunciation of her driving I didn't wait around for a verbal aftermath, I kept running, she stared after me mouth ajar- I was sort of expecting her to yell at me- everyones initial reaction to situations like this is to place blame elsewhere; but I had beaten her to the punch here, because she continued to drive into me long after I had started shouting and pushing her car away from my legs.  So relax mom, clearly I am not dead, or severely injured, frankly I walked away more or less unscathed; though indignant and self-righteous to be sure. 

Yesterday's heightened anxiety has been quieted with a resolve to embrace uncertainty. Recently a friend has been writing me about her agitation with her husband's friendship with his ex's, I've never had this problem because jealousy isn't really my thing; yet I realized that in the advice I'd given- "The jealousy thing- total waste of your time and energy" there was a nugget of truth for my own anxieties concerning where next for Sylvain and I, after all, I have no way of influencing where he gets an internship or whether I will be able to join him or not. At this point I feel like everyone in the room is on the same page concerning the facts regarding our bank account details and career growth opportunities. Plans cannot be made for the future at this juncture, so we shall all sit back, relax and live in the moment.  

At lunch I taught Sylvain how to make teriyaki sauce, and now he thinks I'm a genius. He told me the first time he had had teriyaki was at Subway in Canada (mdr- mort de rire- die of laughing- similar to our LOL but with a stronger emphasis considering the death element). He had figured teriyaki was a traditional Native American dish. Um, no.