1.  I got sent away from the Realm of Pain yesterday – just for yesterday & today, but I’ll still count it a blessing.  The branch is being renovated, and we’re working in the basement while the main floor is being redone.  The reason we were out of the branch entirely for so long this winter is because the age of the building means that behind all the walls, ceilings, and floors is a nice juicy layer of asbestos.  So yesterday, in the middle of other construction related irritations (alarms that couldn’t be shut down, an almighty pounding and shouting and vibrating upstairs) the fire alarm – the one with flashy lights & automatically calling the fire department – comes on, and all of a sudden the air is filled with – something.

Something that tasted chalky.  Like, say, gypsum.  Which means maybe a wall came down that they weren’t intending to come down?  Whatever.  When it was still hanging in the air after about 10 minutes, I called the health & safety rep. to complain & ask for an air filter or a mask or something.

She took my complaint seriously, and made the staffing person at Central find me a temporary post, stat.  So I got to wait for a bus in the middle of the day, but at least I wasn’t breathing in that crap all day.  My poor coworkers (whose non-pregnant, non-complaining lungs are, apparently, not as important as mine) had to stay, and for that I am sad.  But 2 days without the princess?

Life is good.

2.  Caprese salad for dinner last night.  Mmmm.  Cool.  Mmmmm.

3.  During one of the several times that the subway stopped yesterday, I was trapped on a crowded F train with no air conditioning.  Just as I was getting seriously woozy, a woman halfway down the car noticed, somehow, rousted another woman from her seat, and bulled her way through the crowd to grab me by the wrist, drag me over to the vacated seat and plunk me down in it.

Obviously a mother, herself.

She scolded me all the way to her next stop, about how I needed to kick lazy riders out of their seats.  “They’ll be happy to do it,” she insisted.  “Yeah, if you’re around,” I didn’t say.  “And only because otherwise they’d be afraid that you’d come after them.  Though she be but little, man was she ever fierce!  And I didn’t pass out on the subway.  Three cheers.

4.  Tomorrow’s Friday.  Which is one day closer to Sunday.  Which is when we get to tour the farm in NH where I want to live.

5.  Thor was mightily active yesterday – which is always a good day in my book.  Oh – there he goes again.  Somersault!