Schlepping

Today I took the cats to the vet for a checkup. It's actually a requirement that pets have a health certificate from a vet stating they're in good health and up-to-date on vaccines in order to travel between the US and Mexxico. Luckily there isn't a quarantine period, just the health cert requirement.

All the vets I know are closer to where I always lived which is over 100 blocks from where I'm living now. I asked my college roommate M.'s mom where she goes because she lives up in Inwood which is the northern tip of Manhattan, but it turns out she goes down to Che1sea too to another vet I used to frequent. So I decided I would just take them down there to Grammercy.

It's a big enough trauma to go to the vet at all, but of course today it had to be raining. I could barely walk with the 2 carriers and the umbrella, and on top of that decided to be frugal and take the subway. Which required a transfer at 34th Street which required an escalator. It was quite a process and by the time we got to the vet, we were all a little wet and I was exhausted. At one point, I thought that this is how life must be for a single mother. More than a few people have said to me "You don't have to have a partner to be a mother." Jesus F*ing Christ, who would choose that? I have the highest admiration for single mothers. But that is one difficult path I will not choose to follow. I feel like life is hard enough going through it as a single person. No way do I want to add parenthood on top of that.

$270 later, I walked out of the office and thought how the cats really are like my kids. The way I treat them, especially the whole thing about buying an extra ticket for them to come here so they would be in the plane with me, and all the money I've spent over the years. And the best reward for that was their vet visit today. It's one thing to have the vet in Mexxico, land of less well-treated animals, to tell me how good they look. But here I was in eNYC, where pets are the most pampered and I would guess may live longer than anywhere, and the vet seemed really in awe about how good the cats looked and how healthy they are. Makes me feel good.

At 2 different points in our journey I was reveling in how much I love eNYC. First on the subway downtown, I looked across the aisle to see a very dark skin black man, dressed in urban style (doo rag, baseball cap, baggy jeans) sitting next to an old Orthodox Jewish man with a white beard, glasses, and the typical outfit of a hat and suit. There they were and I wished I had a camera because where else in the world would you find the juxtaposition of those two men? I do feel like the subway is one of many things that makes eNYC great; it's a great equalizer.

Later on the way home from the vet, I stopped into my favorite photography store to pick up a cord (and of course walked out having spent $110 on the cord and various other items I decided I needed). As I was leaving, one of the sales guys says loudly, "What are you schlepping all that stuff for?" in that one-of-a-kind NY Jewish accent. I love the word "schlep" to begin with; it's one of many Yiddish words that have made it into mainstream vocabulary, at least for us New Y0rkers. But there's something even more endearing to hear it used by a Hasidic Jew with a NY accent.

All that schlepping has worn me out so I might just get to sleep early tonight. Which is good because I'm heading up to CT tomorrow for a final visit with the family before I head back south of the border.