Idiosycratic Life

Today is the First Warm Day here in upstate New York. (Does Westchester count as Upstate? New Yorkers seem to refer to anything beyond the 5 boroughs and Long Island as “Upstate.”)

It’s like the first warm day in Syracuse, where everyone is so grateful to see the sun that they come out of hiding. For the first few days, everyone is friendly and tries not to see all the garbage that was hidden under all the snow is still on the sidewalk, crusted over with gravel and salt dust.

People sit out on the quad in the few spots that aren’t muddy and marshy, and even though it’s only 60 degrees Fahrenheit and dark gray traces of snow still line the edges of the sidewalk curbs and the places where the buildings cast their shadows, I would bet $20 that some emaciated girl (who paid $125 for her fake tan at the Electric Beach on M Street and then $1250 on a Spring Break trip where she spent most of the peak tanning hours passed out in a hotel room sleeping off her hangover) will be laying out there in a bikini, covered in goosebumps, (the girl, not the bikini), and everyone else will have resurrected last year’s tank tops and Cargo/Capri pants, which, by the way, are “back” this year fashion-wise. (Did they ever go away?)

As for me? Stephen would have pulled me out of bed to “drive to fun places,” or Erika and/or Jo and/or I would have taken Bella down to the amphitheater where we would cheer when she would run so fast she would keep up with the big dogs or jump up onto the stage, and we would try not to think about Lucky.