emlocke

Category: In Retrospect

  • Dear Dixie

    1468800_843481833585_1243191480_nOne year since you, Dix. Dixie Chick of Shadowland White. Dixalicious. Chunk with the Junk in Her Trunk. My Snuggleupagus.

    I still miss you every every every day, especially when I’m walking home after work. I used to get home and launch into a frustrated rant about work or slow walkers or silent filibusters. You’d sit at my feet, shifting back and forth, if necessary, as I paced, twitching the very tip of your tail hopefully, like you always did. When you got impatient, you’d put your paw up on my knee, like, “excuse me, down here, hi, hi, hello!” I’d finally get the message, and I’d kneel down to greet you and instantly forget all my troubles.

    When I scratched your ears, rubbed your belly, or snuggled your scruff, your comfort and happiness comforted me and made me happy. I believe you knew that, and that you felt the same way.

    I loved knowing—usually—what you needed from me, and that I could provide it. And you could always give back what I needed most from you. Could you read my mind and know what I was feeling? I’m not entirely sure about that. I think it just worked out that what was best for you was best for me; that’s enough for me to know that our bond was special—honest, generous, affectionate, and loyal.IMG_4797

    I’ve faced some tough times in the last year. When I’m sad, sick, or tired, I miss you terribly. When I can’t sleep or concentrate, I remember your thunderous snoring and the insistent, reassuring press of your forehead, chin, or rump against me. When I feel weak or hopeless, I remember your steady gait and your patient gaze. But I also miss you when I’m happiest, because feeling safe, peaceful, or loved always reminds me of you.

    A few fantastic things have come my way this year, too—four of them are other Shadowland labs, including your granddaughter, Birdie Balderdash!

    Ida Run-A-Muck & Birdie “The Bird” Balderdash of Shadowland, November 2015

    Your wonderful pawrents Karen and Craig have sent Birdie, along with young ladies named Ida, Sally, and Shirley, to visit me, and Mom and Dad, for sleepover weekends when we’ve needed some labrador love in the house.

    12742131_10100210970829665_4083055946047667566_nSisters (yes, littermates!) Sally and Shirley of Shadowland, February 2016

    Shadowland is in very good paws with those girls! We feel so lucky to be part of the extended Shadowland family, thanks to you. Karen and Craig adored you; I’m so grateful that they shared you with me.

    Right after you died, I worried a lot about where you might be and if you were okay there. It tore up my heart to think about you being somewhere unfamiliar, not sure what to do, lonely, waiting for me, and wondering why I didn’t come. On bad days, I felt so guilty, angry, helpless, and sad that I looked forward to the “good” days when just the sadness, on its own, felt tolerable. A year later, I think I’ve finally come to believe that wherever you are, you’re safe and content, and comfortable enough to roll belly-up when you’re dreaming. Now, I’m just hoping I get to be with you again someday, there, wherever there is. I know you’ll wait for me.

    IMG_5083

    It’s been a very warm March week, the kind of days you would have liked to spending lying on the deck, baking in the sun. Even before it registered that this anniversary was approaching so quickly, I’d found myself thinking about how much you loved to do that and wishing you were here to enjoy this weather. Making you happy was not only a delight, but a point of pride! I hadn’t grasped that facet of love so thoroughly until I loved you; you probably understood it all along.

    IMG_4728

    So, wherever you are, know that I’m thinking about you, which is kind of like petting you with my mind. Thank you for being my best friend. I promise that I’m okay and I’m ready to love another dog full-time, just as soon as I’m allowed to bring one home! I’m so proud of you for overcoming your fear of cutlery and for becoming the Dog of the House after Maggie was gone. You did a great job looking after Mom and Dad. Please say ‘hi’ to Maggie for me. You’re a good, good girl. I love you, Dix.

    Always,

    Your Girl, Emily

  • “We stop existing and start living.”

    So, Michael Jackson died.

    Say what?

    I know, right?

    That was my reaction, too, when I got home from work last night and flipped on NY1 to see crowds of people gathering not in Azadi Square in Tehran, but outside Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. I descended on to the futon and sat there staring at the TV and wearing my doubleyoo-tee-eff face—the one I use to bait instant assistance in hardware stores and auto service stations.  One eyebrow up, one eyebrow down, nose wrinkled a little bit, mouth quirked up on one side and mouth dropped open (the degree of openness depends on the extent of my confusion).

    Like Michael himself, my grieving process was unconventional.  In lieu of anger, bargaining, and depression, my emotions hopped from yeah right to uhhh, for serious? to this is super freaking weird and then I had to call my dad and ask him why so many bad things are happening in the world.

    My Cool Aunt gave me Dangerous on cassette tape for Christmas when I was eight years old and I lllllloved it. I just listened to iTunes’ 30 second preview of each song and I recognize only five: Heal The World, Black or White, Who Is It, Give In To Me (sort of?), and Will You Be There. Those are tracks 7-11, and from that I deduce that Black or White and Will You Be There were my favorite songs, and I learned to like the ones in between them (and the one right before Black or White because I had to hear some of it every time I rewound my tape to play through again—and again and again, for weeks straight).

    It was the first mainstream album that ever captured me (previous fixations included the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid and the greatest hits of Sharon, Lois, and Bram). It’s hard to understand retrospectively exactly what it was, but there was something about the music—and to a lesser extent, the lyrics—that I really felt. It sounded beautiful and interesting and emphatic in a way that I hadn’t yet realized music could sound. (more…)

  • Obeying weather patterns

    Sometimes it snows in March

    Last week, I was tromping around in the snow on the roof of my office building.  It was so windy that my pupils couldn’t focus properly, like I had a layer of slush coating my eyes instead of tears.  My hands were slow and stiff in the cold, but I managed to take the token self-portrait above.  For posterity.  Because I hadn’t expected to hear the voluminous hush of snow again in Winter 2009, and then I got this one last chance.  And you never know where I’ll be for Winter 2010.

    Over the weekend, positively balmy temperatures drained away every remnant of that last chance snow storm.  I went out in a cotton tank and a light wool cardigan.  Wearing sporty silver flats.  My bare ankles were exposed and they were like, “hello world!”  We opened all the windows on Saturday morning and when I got home early, early Sunday morning, the smell of warm, damp bricks still swished around the perimeter of the apartment.

    One year, my high school closed for a day in the middle of May because all the school buses had been vandalized.  Usually it takes a snow storm to cancel school, but they couldn’t transport students in buses with blacked out windows.  The weather was warming up, but that day, the air just happened to be saturated with the scents of sun and grass.  It was so, so hard to go back to school the next day, having had that taste of summer, and knowing that our long vacation was so close.

    Now that there’s no real summer vacation to anticipate, the weather taunts me with just the coming of a different season.  Me and my ankles.

  • Not a story about my Baptism

    In the eighth grade, right before the weather got too hot and the rigor of middle school final exams fell upon our shoulders, our teachers took us to see a play.  I don’t remember what the show was, but when it was over, the Land Jet buses commissioned for the field trip across state lines shuttled us to South Street Seaport, where we had a couple of hours to feed and entertain ourselves.

    It would be two and a half years before terrorists attacked the Twin Towers, a ten minute walk across the Financial District.  We were just a year away from the Columbine school shooting; a team of reporters would come to our cafeteria to ask us how what we thought about the comparisons drawn between our high school and Columbine.  These were the days before snipers staked out gas stations in the Beltway and the annual D.C. trip (which my class had taken in October) was canceled indefinitely because, really, what choice was there?

    But in the spring of 1998, the world was safe enough, apparently, to set two hundred fourteen-year-olds loose in a retail and entertainment slash historical district with a loosely-defined border and poorly-enforced boundaries.

    The big, bad city on one side and the East River on the other, and the lot of us killing time in the middle.  Maybe it was a test.  Overcrowding was a hot issue in our school district; maybe they hoped to whittle down the class of 2002.

    The chaperones, mostly teachers, seemed not much more apprehensive than usual.  As the buses shimmied through traffic in the last few blocks before the seaport, my Social Studies teacher rose from her seat to stand in the aisle right next to the driver and gave orders to travel in groups of four or six, and to maintain an unobstructed view of at least one classmate at all times.  And then the bus doors opened.

    My first impression of South Street Seaport was the sun drenched cobblestone pavilion, and beyond that, weather worn wooden steps down to the water.  The breeze tossed my long ponytail in a way that I hoped was attractive.  I put on sunglasses and pretended to know what it felt like to be a grownup.

    After lunch, I browsed souvenir shops with my group.  I was still waiting in line at a toy store when the clock struck; we were supposed to be back at the bus, but everyone waited for me to pay for my Sea Slipper toy (a water balloon that slips inside out itself, like a Möbius strip, like this).

    We hurried to join the crowd of students waiting for the buses, hoping the authority figures wouldn’t notice our tardiness.  None of them did, but our classmates told us that we’d missed an impromptu class photo.  The principal had been so pleased with our collective good behavior that she decided to document the occasion.  Our class had already been photographed on the bleachers in the gym (officially) and at The Awakening outside of D.C. (unofficially).  I felt guilty for holding up my friends just for a silly toy, but if anybody cared, they didn’t say so.  We took turns playing with the Sea Slipper, passing it between our seats the whole ride back to school.

    We were over class pictures, I decided.  Beyond them, above them.

    A few weeks later, I brought the toy with me to Sunday School.  Attendance was mandatory; I was expected to at least fake my way through my Confirmation at the end of the year.  I needed something to distract me from the resentful boredom I endured every week.

    I let it slip and slip and slip through my fingers, and then without thinking, I slipped my thumbnail under the taped seam.  The plastic bubble burst, dousing my hands and the front of my sweater in blue water.

    My classmates laughed so hysterically that I left the room only under the guise of going to the restroom to wring myself out.  I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t go back.  In retrospect, they were probably not as gleefully entertained by my mishap as they were grateful for the distraction, but I hated them for laughing. I left the deflated water balloon in the garbage, wet clumps of glitter clinging to its shapeless skin, and I slipped over to the church to sit with my mom.

    The girls found me at coffee hour after the service.

    “You never came back,” they said.  Well, no.  How could I?  It was bad enough to take Communion with that faint blue stain on my sweater.  I certainly wasn’t going to let those jerks sit and stare at it instead of listening to the Gospel lesson.

    I was done with Sunday School, I decided.

    Not long after that, I was confirmed, and if God noticed my truancy, He didn’t say.

  • We probably don’t have to worry about me doing crack either

    I’m a needle-phobe.

    I was a Ranger at Camp Jewell the summer before I started college and the campus health center came calling.  They sent notice in the form of a blank immunization record: I was due for a tetanus booster.

    The camp nurse shuttled me off to the local doctor.  I accompanied a nine-year-old with her arm in a sling and a fourteen-year-old with a head cold who never lowered the hood on his sweatshirt.  I was the stand-in counselor, responsible for the kids’ IDs, paperwork, and behavioral supervision.  That I just so happened to require my own medical attention was gravy.

    The doctor took the kids first, leaving me to sweat it out in the waiting room, surrounded by trucks with three wheels and a Fisher-Price animal sounds spinner toy that was stuck on the sheep’s baaa.  The Colebrook Family Practice collection of communal hand-me-downs.  I sorted pieces of mixed-up puzzles into their rightful boxes, pretending it could distract me from the dreadful needle anticipation.

    By the time I got my turn in the exam room, I’d gotten myself all worked up.  The doctor opened the door and my chin began to tremble.  He snapped my college admission health form to his clip board and I flinched.  He prepared the syringe and I started to cry . . . and continued to cry as he administered the jab . . . and continued to cry as he applied a bandage and I threaded my sore arm back into the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

    The doctor made his notes and signed my form and stepped out of the room.  Before the door swung closed behind him, he glanced over his shoulder at me.  I had blotted my tears with a shredded tissue and was fanning my face with both hands, hoping to look less pitiful when I faced the campers outside.

    “I guess we don’t have to worry about you shooting up,” he said.

    It was the first and last thing he said to me.

    He was dead on, though.  Intravenous drug abusers must be on crack.

    Wait, is crack an intravenous drug?

  • Yeer Inn Rev-yoo: 2008

    1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
    Flew first class.  Missed a plane.  (Different trips.)  Got a raise for more than fifty cents.

    2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
    My New Year’s resolutions were to try more new foods and to stop kissing random boys for sport.  Trying new foods (and wines) was not easy on my stomach so I cut myself a break there, but I think I cut my random boy-kissing down by about eighty-eight percent.  I’m resolving again in 2009.

    3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
    No.  Nobody gave birth while close to me either, which is an even greater relief.

    4. Did anyone close to you die?
    No, not this year.

    5. What countries did you visit?
    Texas, USA.

    6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
    Whatever it is that some people have that allows things to roll of their backs. New lightbulbs in the hallway.

    7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
    February 24: A randomly recalled brunch with Rachel
    July 5: Jill called to tell me that Kevin had officially proposed and I was officially her maid of honor
    July 28: First day back at work after my family vacation
    November 5: Barack Obama Day
    December 3: Black Wednesday in the book publishing business

    8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
    Every time I made someone laugh.

    9. What was your biggest failure?
    Dropping the ball on a lot of social engagements (missed opportunities to make someone laugh!)

    10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
    A slipped disc which triggered sciatic pain which triggered depression.

    11. What was the best thing you bought?
    The tree print I got at IKEA. It may be vague, mass-produced art, but it’s my art.

    12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
    The members of the ASPCA and other organizations who lobbied to protect, shelter, and rehabilitate the pit bulls rescued from Michael Vick’s property in 2007 when not even PETA thought the dogs would stand a chance.

    13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
    People who abuse the little red “urgent” exclamation mark on their e-mails.

    14. Where did most of your money go?
    Rent.

    15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
    Election night.  My cousin moving to New York.

    16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
    Say by John Mayer and Bleeding Love.  And I guess Paper Planes because I think M.I.A.’s licensors wanted it to be the song that always reminds everybody of 2008.

    17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
    a) happier or sadder?     Happier.
    b) thinner or fatter? Thinner but not by much.
    c) richer or poorer? Richer but not by much.

    18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
    Weight training. Writing.  Picture-taking.

    19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
    I wish I hadn’t spent so many Saturdays and Sundays pacing in my apartment because I couldn’t  decide where I’d go or what I’d do once I left it.

    20. How did you spend Christmas?
    At home with my parents, my brother, and my dog.  I slept until my mom woke me up with breakfast and I think I finally got used to the fact that my brother and I are the last ones downstairs on Christmas morning instead of the first.

    21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
    For me, falling in love is both a masochistic hobby and a guilty pleasure.  Just like falling out of love.  I did both.

    22. What was your favorite TV program?
    Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

    23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
    No; I think I hate pretty much the same cast of characters this year as I did last year.

    24. What was the best book you read?
    The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso.

    25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
    I heard a lot of new music on So You Think You Can Dance over the summer, like Charlotte Martin’s cover of Just Like Heaven.

    26. What did you want and get?
    A new digital camera.  A bottle of Jo Malone’s Blue Agava and Cacao perfume.  To visit Camp Jewell with the Liftman sisters.  To see the rainbow in San Antonio.  To meet Mariska Hargitay.

    27. What did you want and not get?
    Peace of mind.  Aviator sunglasses with purple lenses.

    28. What was your favorite film of this year?
    WALL·E.

    29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
    Cupcakes. To celebrate turning twenty-four, I invited friends of all genres to Clandestino for drinks on the Thursday before my birthday and ate more cupcakes than I drank beer.

    30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
    A private turn-down service at my apartment.  Firefox compatibility on my PC at work.

    31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
    “I bought this without trying it on because I can’t tolerate waiting in line for a fitting room” chic or “Wouldn’t this look awesome with a scarf or a pin or a necklace?  Too bad I never leave enough time to accessorize in the AM” chic.

    32. What kept you sane?
    Flavored carbonated water. Talia. My iPod.  My roommate. My scale.

    33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
    Clearly, Mariska Hargitay.  ‘Fancy’ is a neat way to describe my unabashed adoration.

    34. What political issue stirred you the most?
    The fact that as the war in Iraq goes on and on and the economy continues to suffer, I may never get to see the environment become a campaign priority.

    35. Who did you miss?
    Rachel, after she dashed off to light up the lives of young leaders all over the world.  My dog.

    36. Who was the best new person you met?
    Amy, who I still believe is meant to be my friend even though extenuating circumstances keep postponing it.

    37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
    One in four women think they sweat more than the general population and I am one of those women.

    38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
    “I don’t necessarily buy any key to the future or happiness, / But I need a little place in the sun sometimes.”—Moses, Patty Griffin

  • K is still my favorite letter

    My very first online identity was JKBosco.  Bosco was my cat’s name.  In this case, J/K didn’t mean “just kidding,” and they didn’t stand for “Jack’s kiss,” which is what every girl in the eighth grade wanted to talk about after seeing Titanic (the first time, the second time, the twelfth time).  J and K were my favorite letters of the alphabet.

    You know, George Eastman formulated the name of his camera company based on his favorite letter of the alphabet.

    Titanic was on TV over the weekend.  I’ve learned to turn it off right around the 94-minute mark, which is when this colossal crag creeps out of the darkness and wields its bitter chill at the young lovers, Jack and Rose.  It’s hard to believe that I sat through this movie in the theater on four different occasions, and then went home, logged in to an AOL chatroom, and engaged in serious discussion and analysis as JKBosco.

  • This is the last you’ll hear about it from me

    I wrote an e-mail today “to the many members of my urban tribe.”  I’ll write the same message here to visitors, feed readers, friends, foes, and to tribe members not in my Gmail address book:

    This is merely a reminder, a gentle prod to your ribs, and not a politically partisan overture.

    I get a paycheck and health benefits, recycle, pay taxes, and have been called for jury duty in New York State. I’m still registered to vote in Connecticut. For the rest of you who have relocated to a new state since you first registered to vote or since the election in 2004—it is not too late to register to vote in your new state or to request an absentee ballot from your home state for the Presidential General Election on November 4.

    I requested an absentee ballot from my home town clerk by mail last week. This website walked me through it: Long Distance Voter. It was easy. Seriously. If you’re looking for a challenge, get your voting rights squared away and then come by and help me try to fit all my clothes into my closet.

    I would consider either one a personal favor.

    To expand:

    In a way, Republican candidate Senator John McCain inspired this general petition to exercise your voting rights. Today, he opted to participate in the debate with his opponent, acceding in his actions if not with his words that, as Barack Obama said, “it’s more important than ever that we present ourselves to the American people and try to describe where we want to take the country.”

    But in fact, John McCain first inspired this message when I met him four years ago, less than one month before the 2004 Presidential election.  By chance, we were seated at the same table at a bicentennial celebration at the Naval Academy Prep School in Newport, Rhode Island.

    He introduced himself and then asked my two friends and me, all three of us Mount Holyoke students, if we knew who we’d vote for.  One declared herself undecided; the other said, “pass;” I said that I would vote for his party’s opponent, John Kerry, because I preferred his positions on education and the environment.

    McCain told us that it’s important for young adults to know which issues matter to them and to vote accordingly; that it’s important for us, as young women, to cast our votes.

    I did vote, Senator, and I am voting again.

  • It goes, “verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus” or something like that

    There was an episode of the Nickelodeon series The Adventures of Pete and Pete where little Pete, the brother with the wiggling mermaid tattoo on his arm, hears a garage band playing this one song and then can’t get it out of his head.  He realizes he’s discovered his favorite song, but he doesn’t know the band’s name or the song’s title.  Everybody he tells about his favorite song thinks he’s imagining it or making it up.

    I was probably in fourth or fifth grade, just starting to explore new music, when I watched Pete and Pete.  And I wish I could remember the songs I recorded from the radio at that age, the ones I intended to play for the clerk at Volt Records, who I sort of perceived to be the oracle of chords and lyrics and could identify the title and artists.  

    Those were the days before Google.  Thanks to the internet, so favorite song will ever get lost in a garage.

    There is only one song that I’ve never been able to identify with a Boolean search.  It’s by a children’s duo that played a concert at an elementary school in town and sold low-budget recordings when I was a small child.  It’s about a leprechaun who jumps over a rainbow and I think its melody was inspired by Seven Wonders Fleetwood Mac, so I think of it every time I hear that song.

    And now I will identify the songs I’ve been listening to this week:
    21 Reasons by Frank Black and the Catholics
    It’s You by Annie Stela
    Don’t Mess With the Radio by Kelis (“she’s only Nas’ wife!”—sales associate at Jo Malone)
    Already Gone by Sugarland
    Sun’s Gonna Rise by Citizen Cope

  • I won’t put on tomorrow’s bra before I get in bed tonight.

    Highly Notable Events in August 2008

    • Browsed wedding dress possibilities with my dearest friend Jill (her dress, not mine)
    • Tuned in to coverage of the Democratic National Convention
    • Tried a new Thai restaurant in Park Slope before my roommate did
    • Acknowledged my compulsive need to be “the favorite”
    • Visited Camp Jewell for the first time in almost five years

    I started this blog five years ago today by summarizing the highly notable events of Summer 2003.  For two weeks, I coded every entry in Notepad and loaded them page by page to my web space on the school server.  Then my HP laptop crashed (surprise.) and I started posting to Blogger.  Google had just acquired Blogger, and as an early-ish adopter, I was one of the first ‘citizens’ from outside the Googlesphere to receive a Gmail invitation.  I’ll keep boasting about that even though I switched to WordPress in February 2006; and, nobody cares when I was invited to Gmail.

    September.  It was the time of year when new pens still smelled new and I had all kinds of plans for a school year more productive, accomplished, and fulfilling than the last.  Before my notebooks got dogeared and my penmanship got sloppy.  Before a leaky highlighter in the bottom of my bag bled through half of Tuesday, and Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday on every single page of my planner.

    I used to resent this time of year in this sort of subterranean way, veiled by typical complaints about the end of the summer and by the goody-two-shoes excitement to go Back to School.  In my unseen heart, I considered it a mean trick. I wondered if the summer off was worth the consequence.  It was a false start—a new year in September?  It promised all these new chances and beginnings, but nothing seemed to change.

    I remember staying up later than I’d ever stayed up on a school night before my first day of fourth grade.  I was organizing my closet.  Sorting troll dolls and amateur pottery.  I cleaned my room like it had never been cleaned before.  I thought if it looked like a Pottery Barn catalog (or like the set of Full House) when I woke up on The First Day of School, it would stay that way all year.

    In the days right before the seventh grade, I dropped hints to my mom that I wanted my first real bra because the narrow straps on my First Day of School dress would expose the sports bras I usually wore.  I also refused to kneel on the carpet, which is how I usually watched TV or worked on craft projects, because The Dress revealed my knees and I didn’t want them to look chafed.

    Every night for three weeks before my senior year in college, I sneaked out of the house and drove into town to walk the length of Main Street and loops around the Middle School for an hour or more, sometimes into the next morning.  Ever since, I’m tempted to go for a long walk when I can’t sleep.  I’ve tried to think of a safe place to go in the middle of the night.  At home, my biggest concerns were distrustful cops and groups of stoned teenagers.  In New York, I have to wait until the gym opens at five if I need to outrun insomnia.  I’ve done it before.

    Outrunning—that’s what it’s always been.  And when I tried to dodge bad habits, quick fix damage, or elude depression, they always caught up with me.  They’ve chased me down.  I decided to expunge ten years of slobbery on the night before fourth grade?  Perfect timing.  I had really started to believe that life worked that way; that time was defined either from one day to the next or over the span of three seasons, and never in between.  Time dropped paperweights and bookends in the same spots every year until graduation.

    Since my days of First Days of School, I’ve been more free to take each day as it comes.  To take.  Each day, individually.  For what it is.  As it comes.  Not before.  Nor after.  One at a time.  In chronological order.  I know it sounds indifferent, like how you live when you’re just getting by.  But, honestly?  I would rather get through every day without walking all night just to get to it.