In the past twenty-four hours I have covered a sizable portion of this fair city on foot.  Last night, the BF and I went with another couple on a grown-ups date to see West Side Story on Broadway.  I am sorry to say that I thought it sucked.  But not as badly as the BF thought it did.  After the 112th dancing number, I turned to look at him.  He was leaned back in his seat with his hand covering his mouth, as if to impede a vomit eruption.  “Too much dancing?” I whispered to him.  He nodded silently at me.  As soon as the intermission lights came on, he hightailed it to the bar.  To refill our revolutionary new theater glassware…wait for it…

A grown-up sippy cup that they let you take to your seat during the show!  (I still almost spilled my wine.  Probably because I was wearing a white dress, and that danger curve is just too high.)  Turns out the cure for too much dancing is alcohol.  So the night wasn’t a total loss!  Especially when we decided to walk home.  So there we were, cruising along 46th street, enjoying the sixties temps and perfect breeze.  There are times when this city sneaks up on you and takes your breath away.  Like when you look up to see Grand Central lit up at night, for example.  I thought about all the night-walking I did when I was single, and how the city was almost enough company and God certainly was, but I still wondered if I’d ever have someone else to share it all with.  And then someone snuck up on me and took my breath away, and here we were, holding hands and critiquing Broadway shows.

And then I looked up and had my breath taken away in an entirely different way:

Dear Lord.  What is wrong with that bear’s EYE?!  And I swear I saw his tiny friend pointing at me and laughing.

Anyway, isn’t life is all about the things that sneak up on you?  Yet so many of them appear undesirable at first glance.  A friend on Facebook wrote about how her kids are really sick right now and that this development caused her weekend to not be the one she had planned.  “Plans in pencil!” I thought to myself cheerily, thinking of writing her a message about how the best things happen apart from our planning, and in spite of it.  And secretly thinking how glad I was to be so mature and enlightened.  Cut to my phone ringing and a parent telling me her child had a toothache and could I please see them at the office today?  The office that is closed but that I am on call for?  Piety and platitudes are so easy to come by when life is going the way you want it to.

So I went in and took the kid’s tooth out.  The way there, walking those nearly thirty blocks, I was irritated.  So I resorted to that habit I have of taking out my anger internally, by imagining fake conversations where I tell people off.  Which is the reason I arrived at the office hot and bothered from a yelling match with Jon Gosselin over his hideous parenting and life choices.  But the mom and her son didn’t know that, and they were very appreciative of my time.  Then they left and I was there when the phone rang and it turned out to be a local magazine wanting to do a brief interview about children’s oral health.  I obliged her, even though on-the-spot questions unnerve me and it’s quite possible I suggested that parents brush their kids’ teeth with a Snickers bar.  Barring that, I got some good publicity for our office!

Between that trip uptown and my morning venture to the West Village in the hopes of stumbling onto the Sex and the City 2 film set (I did; however, they were just beginning to set up and I didn’t have time to wait for the eventual actor arrival), my New York feet are irritated with me.  And honestly, I’m irritated with myself for still so often being insistent on my own short-sighted plans.  When the toothache call came in this morning, I had just finished my daily prayer to be reminded that nothing I have–time, talents, relationships–is ultimately mine, but God’s.  And then I almost lost it over an hour-and-a-half interruption to my lazy day.  Guess I have a long way to go.  But how humbling and thankfulness-inducing is it to be led by someone who can see around the corners and know the better way to go?  Even when it does involve creepy teddy bears.