Outside is open again

I had a really good birthday in the end. Lunch with the long ago middle school moms was a lot of fun. As soon as I walked into the restaurant they yelled "Happy Birthday!" How did they know?? Facebook, they replied, handing me the lovely tulip plant they had brought me. So it turned out to be a surprise birthday lunch for me, an excellent easygoing kickoff to my birthday. Afterward I went and got myself a pedicure, been needing that, and then I came home and my friend Lisa came by with an orchid plant for me, and then my man arrived home from work with a cake, and soon the kids were walking through the door, two of them bearing a cool new Nespresso coffee machine for me, because they'd clocked me rhapsodizing over my niece's own when we were in Dallas a month ago. "We're always listening," my future son-in-law said with a wink. I am now enjoying a perfect frothy cup of joe made from said machine. 

Later, when we went to sing and cut the cake, we realized we had no candles, but who needs to be blowing out candles in this post covid world anyway? Instead, we poured each person a shot of tequila and after everyone sang the birthday song we all downed our shot and cheered. Hmmm, could be a new tradition. I loved having everyone around, and puppy Munch, too, weaving in and out of the activity, but I was also a bit in my head, worrying about things, unable to release the obsessions of the night before that I didn't actually share in my last post. Oh this noisy brain. What's the use of worrying about that over which we have no control. And yet we can't reason our way out of worry. If only it worked that way.

The pictures here are of the new wing of the natural history museum where my husband is an ichthyologist. They are busy moving the department's collection back into the spanking new building that took five years to construct. It officially opened to the public at 2 pm today. Man, that was fast. Five years ago, right after my husband underwent emergency open heart surgery, in the very month that he returned to work, they moved the collection out of the old space and the staff offices into trailers in anticipation of the old building's demolition. It seemed like science fiction, both the design for the new building ("Part Dr. Suess and part Jurassic Park," one columnist opined) and its projected completion date—2023 sounded really far away back in 2017. 

And now it is done, and my husband and his colleagues have spacious new offices overlooking the airy organic curves of the research atrium. The architecture of the whole building seems futuristic and prehistoric at the same time. I actually love the way it turned out, even though the builders are still working out all sorts of kinks. Having gone through recent tiny renovations, in which the details seemed absolutely endless, I can only imagine what a punch list for such a mammoth project must be like.

Setting up the ichthyology department anew is requiring all hands back on deck, and may take as long as six months before everything is completed. No more three days a week in the office, two from home for my man. I miss him being home on a Monday and Friday. I'm realizing I feel very grounded as I work when he's moving around in my orbit. But New Yorkers are creeping back up to five-day-a-week office schedules now, and remote work gets lonely sometimes. I anticipate taking my computer and working in public spaces again, as I often used to do before covid shut the world down.

Above is an immersive exhibit of some sort, I'm not sure what it shows, but it looks like synapses in a brain. And below are some jars from the ichthyology collection on display in the newly opened public area. These fish specimens have been treated with specific chemicals that render the flesh gel clear, leaving the bones red, and the cartilage blue, allowing an unobstructed view of those aspects of their anatomy. A while back, Steve wanted to see what these cleared-and-stained specimens looked like. Here you go, Steve. Maybe you will also recognize the scientist pictured with them, though he doesn't recognize himself. "Not a gray hair in sight," he muttered, shaking his white-bearded head.

Here's what his quote in that red bubble next to his picture says: "One time, my son was visiting and asked, 'Have you ever seen something no one here has seen before?' A scientist who had just returned from Africa laid out six fish in my son's palm. He said, 'This one we know about. The rest are new to science.'"