Everything is true except for the part about the mustache.

The humidity level is somewhere past 100 and it’s 97 degrees and my computer is melting. The child is in his crib, doing what he does best: napping and sweating. There’s air conditioning on in there, so I don’t know why he wakes up sopping wet. Then again, this morning he told me he had just been “flying a little” and “there was some basketball downstairs.” Sounds like a workout, son! You should dream about sending email, like I do!

A while back, I promised two exciting tales: my tale of subway drama, and my appearance on Bravo. See, I didn’t forget. Only I began to think that neither of these anecdotes is all that interesting after all. But whatever, I have nothing else to give.

The subway incident went something like this: Henry and I were with our friends, J. and F., who hail from the town of P___ S___. We had just been to the New York Aquarium, which is all the way down in Coney Island. The outing had been my idea, and like so many of my ideas, it had been a terrible one. There were many subway stairs to negotiate. The toddlers were cranky, as toddlers so often are. The aquarium was both expensive and crowded. Henry had no interest in anything but the sharks. The sharks, and then we were done. DONE, do you hear me? DONE. No, he did NOT care about the starfish or the seahorses (they’re horses of the sea, kid! Give them a chance) nor would he give a second glance to the walruses, even though they were much more impressive than the sharks, if you ask me. But he wasn't asking me. No, no NO. So I shelled out $18 for fifteen minutes of holding a screaming 40-pound child while I searched for the shark exhibit and then two minutes of holding a silent 40-pound child while we looked at sharks. Then we went down to the beach, and hey! What a worse idea to have than the aquarium! At the beach, the children can coat their sunscreen-marinated bodies in sand, and be like hot little breaded fillets. Fillets that want to be held! And don’t want to go anywhere near the water even though it’s hotter than hell!

And then we poured some melted ice creams down our shirts and hauled them up the assload of stairs to the subway and there we were on the subway, finally. We were sweaty and disheveled and two out of the four of us needed diaper changes. It was our stop. I was holding Henry and I ran ahead to the door because I’m paranoid about the door closing before we can escape.

And then it closed. On my foot.

My foot was inside the train. I was outside, on the platform. Henry was in my arms. J. and F. were inside the train, looking out at us. My stroller was inside the train. Next to my foot.

And the door, it would not open.

For those of you who do not hail from these parts, the NYC subway doors are merciless. They will close right on you. They are not the friendly elevator doors that occasionally decapitate people but usually are quite nice about letting people through. Not these doors. Once they begin closing, nothing can stop them. You may think they will open. But they will not. No! Usually, if you get a limb stuck, you can wiggle yourself free, but in this case, I couldn’t.

And we were in the last car, which meant that the conductor, wherever he or she was, could not in a million years see me. Me and my trapped foot. My trapped and doomed foot.

So I screamed for a while, but nothing happened, as my scream is thin and girlish. Actually I think I was calling out, “Um, hello? Hello? Trapped foot, over here! Helloooo?” which is not going to get anyone’s attention, especially not here, where the subway conductors will rip your foot off as they head out to their next destination and not think twice about it. Subway conductors would sooner leap out through their window and gnaw at your ankle with their extra-long incisors until your foot is severed from the rest of you than open the doors for you. This is true.

Fortunately, a man sporting a thick, lush handlebar moustache was standing on the platform. He heard my weak cries and, with a booming baritone, demanded that the doors be opened. And lo, they were. And my foot was freed! Hurrah!

Henry was exceedingly concerned about my foot, but this didn’t stop him from demanding that I hold him all the way home. No stroller was good enough for him, as I had been in danger, and this was no time to be separated from me. Never mind about the limping! You hold me, damn it! You see how I love you!

The End. You see? There have been better stories. Like the one about when I was on Bravo! Which I will get to eventually.

More about what pisses me off.

Hi! You know what? I sure am annoyed lately! I was just scribbling down some thoughts for Finslippy, and, well, oh dear:

1. Drivers who reluctantly slow down at stop signs and give the pedestrian a testy little wave, as if to say, “I am doing you an enormous favor. Now scurry along before I change my mind and mow you down.” There needs to be a new obscene hand gesture that indicates, “Hey, jackass, guess what? I don’t need your permission. Stop signs aren’t optional so don’t act like you’re so very generous and I should be grateful. And you’re a jackass. Jackass.” I must begin work on this gesture immediately. To the laboratory!

2. The family members who sometimes behave as if they are not fully aware that Henry knows what words mean. They believe, for instance, that as long as they didn’t use the word B-U-G-S to refer to the B-U-G-S that were invading the basement when we arrived for a visit—as my son, you see, has a crippling fear of the B-U-G-S—he would not pick up on something being amiss even when they came tearing ass up from the basement hissing “OH MY GOD THEY’RE EVERYWHERE THEY’RE ALL OVER HIS TOYS.” And when they’re whispering updates to me on the TERROR FROM BELOW while Henry looks up from his Matchbox cars in wide-eyed horror, it should come as no surprise that the remaining hours of our visit are spent with 40 pounds of boy adhered to me via the Four-Pointed Ninja Monkey Vise Grip around my torso and neck.

3. Dear husband: what do you want from me when you shout from the kitchen, “Jesus, what did you clean with this sponge?” Is there some answer I can give you that would be satisfactory? Would you like to hear that I was exfoliating my cleavage? Or do you imagine that I store a mental tally of all the items I have scrubbed clean, so that hours later I can sit back and enjoy the memories? What a thrilling moment, when I finally rid the casserole dish of those baked-on lasagna bits. Ah, life. Anyway, could you not simply toss the dirty sponge and retrieve a clean one from our under-sink bounty of unused sponges? Should I scamper to your side and find you an acceptable sponge as you watch in manly approval?

4. People who refer to their husbands as “Hubs” or the “The Hubster.” All I can say about this is: no. That’s all. Just: no. I know some of you do it. And I like you! I do! But no. You must stop. Do you hear me? No!

To those readers new to Finslippy, I’m not normally this peeved. Truly. Some days I am positively ebullient. But lately, whew, so negative! I’m sure I’ll perk up one of these days, perhaps when everyone begins to behave exactly as I feel they should.

On a possibly related note, my son has been cursing lately. I don’t believe he’s cursing for effect, as he doesn’t check us for a reaction—as he might do before he, say, brains another child with a dump truck. For example: the other day he made himself comfortable on the couch—raisins? Check. Sippy cup? Check— and called out: “Turn on the TV.” Before I could respond, he repeated, “Turn on the damn TV, please.” Well! And then yesterday, as he pulled an oversized book from the shelf, he exclaimed, “Wow—this is a big fucking book!”

I tried my best not to laugh, but I did anyway. Luckily he didn’t notice, as he was hidden behind the big fucking book.

What I Did This Weekend, by Alice. Now with pictures!

1. I had all of my hair cut off. I now look like Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby,” except in the many ways I look completely different from her.

2. While my husband watched the child, my friends and I went to see Sondre Lerche perform at my brother’s record store. I never thought I would think my brother was cooler than me, as I have long felt myself to be the coolest person in the known universe, but there it is. He has a record store in Williamsburg that is frequented by youngsters who wear ironic t-shirts. I have a child who puts Play-Doh in my hair and says “I made you a hat!” and then I forget about the Play-Doh and walk around with the Play-Doh hat until it falls off.

3. I fell utterly in love with Sondre Lerche, a musician you should get to know because he is wondrously talented, not to mention the dreamiest young Norwegian I have ever had the pleasure to ogle.

4. I felt a little gross about loving Sondre Lerche, as he is maybe 21 and I just turned 36. I and my friends were the oldest people at his show. Except for the 50-year-old guy in the front row who also, I think, was there to enjoy Sondre Lerche for more reasons than his music.

5. I was introduced to Sondre Lerche by my brother, who told the Nordic heartthrob, “Could you come say hello to my sister? She never gets out of the house.”

6. Wow! That was embarrassing!

7. I spent the next seven hours giggling inappropriately.

8. The next day it was some kind of anniversary! It was like six years ago or something that I married that guy, what’s-his-name. I call him “Not-Sondre.”

9. No, seriously. I love that guy! We went out for dinner and everything. Our nice friend Debbie watched Henry while we enjoyed Fancy Italian Food and got drunk on a single glass of wine apiece. We are cheap dates. This morning Henry woke up calling out “Debb-eee… Debb-eee…” and was visibly disappointed to find that I was still his mother.

In conclusion, I had a fun weekend. The End.

UPDATED TO ADD:

Okay, okay. You be the judge:

1. Here I am with my Mia Farrow "I can use a camera" expression:

2. Here I am being told that I'm pregnant--with Satan's baby!

3. And here I am with my Satanic toddler, who is jabbing me in the neck with some tiny remnant of a long-ago torn-to-pieces Star Wars toy.

It's springtime in Brooklyn, and the vermin have returned to us.

This time, instead of the usual (and heart-stoppingly terrifying) waterbugs, we have mice. Cute, teensy-tiny mice. Adorable, filthy, plague-laden mice. So wee! Really, they wouldn’t wig me out overly, if I didn’t think of the hanta virus every time I spotted one making a run for the dog food. And when they’re sitting still, it’s one thing, but usually they’re rushing past. Scurrying, scuttling—any of these motions cause my limbs to flail about as I squeal girlishly. Why is this, that the tiny running things cause one to scream and scream and scream? Also! The noises. The skritchy scrabbly noises. In the walls. Like they’re playing soccer with the skulls of their ancestors. And sometimes—sometimes we hear them gnawing. Gnawing at the plaster, so they can get out. And eat our brains.

We put out a trap. They ignored it. If I leave the dog food unattended for more than a minute, one of them is making a play for it, but leave a hunk of American cheese out all night and the mice decide to exert some self-control. Or else they’re onto us. Actually the day after we left the trap out, the mice disappeared for a while. Then they came back, because they’re stupid and also, mmm, delicious Iams Mini-Chunks. No rodent can resist it.

Then I had to kill one. The dog was sniffing at something in the corner, and there was a quarter-sized baby mouse tangled up in some wires. It was shaking violently. How could my heart not melt? Poor little disease carrier, I wept. I wept softly, because Henry was a foot away, playing with his Star Wars guys. I tried to free it from its prison. I just wanted it to go back to its hidey-hole, back where it could grow up and live to freak me out. But it wouldn’t budge, and it looked sick, and also, technically, we’re enemies. I had a job to do. So as Henry engaged thrusters and activated the launch sequence and kissed Darth Vader full on the lips (he really likes Darth Vader), I nudged the mouselet into a container, tipped the container into a bag, held the bag as far away from me as I could, and told Henry we had to go outside right then! To throw something out! Something gross!

This got his attention. “What is it? It’s gross? What is it?” And for some reason I said, “Charlie pooped. Charlie pooped in the house, and I have to throw it out right now,” and Henry said, “That’s gross,” and actually followed me out the door and down the stairs, all the while talking to himself about how gross that was, pooping in the house, wow, that is really really gross. And then before I could think about what I was doing, I said to Henry, “Okay, don’t mind what I’m going to do right now,” and lifted the bag high and slammed it against the side of the building (rest in peace, poor little mousie) and if you live in Brooklyn and you were walking past right then and you heard a boy asking his mother, “Why did you hit the house with the poop?” now you know what that meant. You’re welcome.