Scenes from a Carriage

- The most fashionable person I've seen in NYC so far I saw at the de-licing salon.
 The parents of Alice's playdate friend had recently found them first on the scalp of their little girl, and then on themselves. They thought they were gone, but then found them AGAIN. It sounded like a nightmare. They had sent us to this place immediately, which does free inspections but then charges $600 a head to get rid of them.

As a steel comb picked through Alice's thin hair, the man slunk, head tilted slightly forward, in the chair across from us. He was about 23 and if he wasn't a model it was a conscious decision. He wore perfectly fitted black everything, sculpted silver rings and a look of resignation. I think there was a little black eye make-up left around his eyes that made them pop. Beside him sat a woman who was about 50, with a fur coat (do they check it for lice as well?), bleached blond hair and surprisingly little work done. I felt like they were the characters in a Lou Reed song but the song's over and they have to slouch off to do things like get de-liced. The man and the woman stared blankly into the space ahead of them as the young African American women searched their hair strand by strand, singing "do do-do, do-do."

"She's all clear!" Alice was lice free! And I was too! Thank freaking god. I roller her out of there and left them to their buggy fate.

- I was at the playground the other day, and saw a dad that I recognized, about 30, rail thin and maybe half-Phillapino. If you frequent a neighbourhood playground, you know that you often run into the same parents, some of whom you end up talking to, some you don't. I hadn't struck up a conversation with this guy yet, but he seemed familiar. He had his back to me as I was trying to figure it out, and I register that there was something on his white shirt. A few things, black bits stuck to brown stains that had saturated the cloth. About four of them up and down his back. Holy shit, I realized. That's blood. He has blood smeared all over his back. And for a second I was suspended in this otherworldly fear - he's a serial killer, and after hacking someone to pieces in his UWS studio apartment has come to take his son to the playground. The juxtaposition of that bloodstained shirt and all those kids running around and screaming sent my stress glands pumping and my eyes looking for Alice. And then I realized where I knew him from - he's the butcher down on Fredrick Douglas, the one whose shelves are sometimes bare. I felt this weird relief even though I knew the chances of him being a serial killer were slim (although earlier in the year a man had randomly stabbed a toddler and his parent in the exact same park.) I appreciate his butchery. He sells good, organic meat. But I'm sure that's an unwritten rule of playground etiquette - don't wear a blood-soaked shirt to the play park.

- Still waiting for my greencard. We thought it would be seven months to complete the process and get me back to wrk. It's been a year and a half now, and no end in sight. Immigration probs has access to my Facebook account, so that's all I'm going to say about that, except Go USA!