The hot water in our apartment has been on the fritz for exactly a week now. As soon as it got arctic-ly cold the hot water went away, particularly in the mornings. For a while you could take a shower at night and still have it be hot, but in the past couple of days the water's been either freezing or tepid.
Now I rant about city noise and roadkill for some reason...
In the two years that I've lived in our building the heat during the winter has always been phenomenal - too hot in fact - so much so that earlier this winter N. and I were turning on the A/C at night, right on into December, because otherwise it was too hot to sleep! If we opened the windows at night it would mean listening to the buses on the busy streets below with their wheelchair lifts going all night (every time I see a wheelchair lift on a bus in action I think of ET cursing it) or construction early in the morning, or idiots hanging out on the street, or the occasional car accident. It's a busy street, a major bus stop, and there are two new buildings going up across the street. Plus late at night you can hear the subway, particularly the train that N. and I call the "lie train" which is the big yellow non-passenger train that only comes when you're late getting home at night. Used to be the same car alarm went off every night at midnight. You know, until they tore the parking lot out.
I've seen three or four parking lots in NYC get torn out and replaced by high-rises. It's led me to believe that most parking lots are sitting ducks.
I mean, sure, I could complain about the street noise here, but back home on the farm where my parents live, leaving the windows open at night (without a fan going) means listening to crazy unidentifiable noises - like something crunching through the dead leaves in the back yard all night long. I assume cats, but aren't cats usually quiet? Well, except for cat fights, which sound like people dying or babies screaming or something crazy.
It's like, sure, I could complain that Penn Station smells like piss all the time, but is that anything compared to a field that has fresh manure spread on it for fertilizer? Or the smell wafting up from pigs in the morning? Or the smell of roadkill? Roadkill has such a distinct aroma. It's the smell of rotting death. Sometimes I can smell something that smells like roadkill in the Canal Street subway station, and that really is frightening, because in the city, dead things usually get cleaned up quickly.
Some time when I was at community college in Michigan the county road commission lost funding and roadkill started piling up. We're not just talking possums, which there are a lot of, no, I mean actual deer carcasses started collecting in the ditches. You might drive by a dozen dead raccoons and not even know it, thanks to some tall grass, but deer carcasses are impossible to miss.
Even going home for Christmas this year I spotted a half dozen or so dead deer, mostly on the side of the highway. Whizzing by at 70 mph doesn't prevent you from spotting an open ribcage and an anatomy lesson.
Roadkill when you're jogging is the worst. You can smell it from a long way off and jogging past it affords a much more horrific view than just driving by. It's always a thousand times more heartbreaking if it's a dog or a cat.
Some people hate the city, but you know what you know what you don't see when you jog through Central Park? Guts! Guts smeared on the road! That's what. Sure, there's that ever-present danger of being mugged, but you can't smell that coming, can you?
As gross as roadkill is, or as dangerous as mugging may be, I don't think I could ever live in a suburb. Seeing a dead deer or some smelly homeless guy is a reminder of mortality and a constant reminder of how fragile life is. What have suburbs got to remind you that at any minute you could bite the big one?
Meanwhile here's a good link to send to your friends who are thinking about visiting New York.
 | You scored as The White Rabbit. You're the white rabbit. 'Nuff said.
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