Siphoning Some Rage

Oh, I was going to write you a rage filled post. A ranting and a raving I would go. I was so looking forward to it. But then something happened.

You see this morning my life looked like this.

We slept in since there was no way Eddie was going to go more than around the block. I dawdled hoping against hope that someone would cancel the world so I could slot myself back into that picture and go back to sleep surrounded by fur and body heat.

Didn't happen.

So I went out into the world with the 12 million or so other New Yorkers and we were huffing and puffing through scarves and blinded by fogged glasses and in some cases willing to body check each other out of the way because apparently all is fair in love, war, and Polar Vortex. I was well bundled and still I was cold. My legs were cold, my toes were cold, my nose was cold when I decided that seeing out of my glasses was more important than whether or not I frostbit an extremity. When I get cold I get angry. The colder the angrier. By the time I got to work I was so enraged I could barely speak. It would be funny if I were exaggerating.

That's when I started crafting my ranty post. I was pretty far along with it, really enjoying myself, until a friend posted that she and her kids had blown bubbles at the bus stop to watch them freeze. At that point I got the idea that maybe I should do a little something to siphon off the rage. Maybe the thing I could do was to buy some bubbles at the nearby drug store and photograph them freezing then buy myself a cocoa. Maybe then the day wouldn't be warmed solely by the flames of my fury.

As I walked to the drug store I realized that this was in keeping with my word of the year, LIGHT. I was taking on the challenge of looking for a little light in an emotionally dark day. Oh goody for me. Two drug stores later I realized the real challenge was looking for some fucking bubbles. Finally at a CVS on a neglected end cap labeled Party Supplies I discovered one lonely six pack of bubbles. I bought it. ($2.99!)

As my friend had mentioned in her post it was hard to catch the bubbles in photos because the wind popped them or carried them away. I wound up in one of those little half phone booths blowing my bubbles into the enclosed space and trying to catch them on the wand. Still the wind thwarted me. I caught one and saw the freezing phenomenon on the wand where the remnants of the popped sphere stood up. I saw many more bubbles fly off down the street, staying airborne and intact for a surprisingly long time, once as much as half a block and up to the second story of a building. I also saw several people give me the side eye but that was ok. I noticed that the bubble juice was freezing on my jacket. Then I noticed that my hands hurt like a bitch so I fumbled the lid back on the bottle and walked into the coffee joint.

There I paid the price. My hands really hurt as they warmed up and I worried that the rage would come back, that I would have wasted my time. I was in the fun coffee place, though, and everyone was super nice. I got my cocoa and there was enough money on my gift card for it. I tipped generously. I put my gloves and my mittens back on and headed the two blocks back to the office feeling just a little lighter.

**I think photographing frozen bubbles might be a 2 person job. You need a bubble blower and a picture taker. Maybe 3 people - bubble blower, picture taker, and mitten putter onner - 'cause it was really hard to put my mittens back on when I'd stiffened my fingers up to much.