Last night was AC’s birthday, and she picked the Red Lobster in Times Square as the site of the festivities.  This was a fun idea right up until the moment the BF and I had to leave for the event.  He was stuck in the middle of a work project that he would have to head straight home from dinner to re-engage in; I was coughing like I was one of Marge Simpson’s smoke-infested sisters due to a cold that has persisted for a week (a cold I believe is due to two things: one, NYU’s policy of forcing flu shots on its employees; and two, the destruction project in our apartment over the past month).  We walked outside and were met by a torrential downpour which, in New York, translates to a dearth of available cabs and an abundance of traffic.  We finally got our cab and sat in traffic for about twenty minutes before deciding to walk the rest of the way to the Lob.  Of course we were late.  And wet.  With bad hair.  I felt an empathy for the lobsters in the tank we passed on our way to the table–victims of a very rough day.

But the dinner was a bright spot in the weekend.  The highlight was the group’s construction of the following list, entitled Top Ten Signs You Know You’re at a Classy New York Restaurant:

1)  Your waiter sports an earpiece and walkie-talkie.

2) You can feel the subway rumble underneath your table.

3) The table beside yours is sprayed down with Windex as you eat.

4) There is a glass elevator to get you to your dining level.

5) Hideous industrial sculptures back-lit by ever-changing indigo/emerald/violet LED lights.

6)  Stock pictures of happy families on the wall behind your table.

7) Entree comes to your table with a lid over it.

8) Portions so large that you throw up a little in your mouth on the way to the bathroom.

Okay, so we could only come up with eight.  But you get the picture: class and style all the way.  Cousin Eddie would be proud.

The BF and I sadly had to miss the Dave and Buster’s after-party.  I sacked out on the couch and watched SNL while he got back to work.  Fifteen hours later, I brought breakfast over and he was still working, his desk littered with various containers of coffee.  He looked at me and I was reminded of the zombies in Shaun of the Dead, the cult classic we watched Friday night (or, as I like to call it, the good old days).   He sat in front of his computer, fielding phone calls from incompetent team members and corporate execs who care more about having a spreadsheet delivered to their inbox on a Sunday morning than getting to their son’s birthday party on time.

I left him to nap and went back to my place, where we have no hot water for the second time in a week and the super won’t call me back.  On the way home, I passed a honeless guy passed out against the side of a bar with a puddle extending from his crotch to the curb.  And I suddenly, violently, felt very over it all: the bums, the greed, the rat in the BF’s wall that scratches occasionally as we watch TV.  I felt raw and depressed and that’s not supposed to happen until at least late January.  It’s hard to find the beach escape hatch in my mind when my head is so cluttered with frustration.

What do you when life in the city is all storms?  Well, here’s my plan for tonight:  I’m going to Redeemer to hear TK speak the truth.  I’m going to believe it regardless of what I walk past on the way there and back.  I’m going to try to laugh about how charmed my life is that I have the luxury of typing about these issues on my laptop.  I’m going to look for that Beach Escape Hatch in my mind, and if I can’t find it I will use my Plan B Image, the one the BF pointed out last night on our walk home:

Bryant Park and the New York Public Library at night, lit up among streets shimmering after a rainfall.  A part of so many of my walks home over the years, though I have usually passed this view either by myself or in the company of bad choices and not-nice people.  Not anymore.  Now we’re at a different part in the story.  A part that includes the BF and friends and silver linings.  It also includes purple lips after a cold shower and my walk home from work yesterday being punctuated by an uncanny connection between the rain stopping and starting with the opening and closing of my umbrella.  In times like those, faith can feel like a liability because if God is in the details, why is he letting the details suck so badly? 

So I wait for the clouds to clear and the streets to shimmer, believing that God may be in the details but those details don’t constitute his character.  Okay, so chunks of my daily life are being documented as evidence in a possible lawsuit against my landlord.  But in life, as in New York, as in faith, the last thing that happened isn’t the end of the story.  It’s just the last thing that happened. 

“Wow, that was a journey,” the BF just said, staring at his work on the computer screen. 

It sure is.