We’re back in Brooklyn and this is a brief (stand-in) update.

I was really excited to be back home until this morning when we went to McCarren Park and the smell of trash was so unbearable we had to leave. And up until about a month ago, I’d have thought, well, trash is just trash. But after reading this story about a badly decomposed body that had been rotting in a storage shed near the kiddy park for several months, I’m more wary of rancid smells.

We visit the park each and every day. Who knows what we’ve been smelling all along.

Em’s birthday was a hoot. We actually had two parties for him. We had a small one for him on Friday evening. We ate lasagna and watched the opening ceremony of the olympics. We consumed ginger cake and ice cream. We fell to bed early.

On the 9th, we held a larger party for him. Relatives came from all over to celebrate. He ate chocolate for the first time. Nico made the cake. She actually made two. One for Em (shown) and a bigger one for the rest of us. It was awesome.

I was a little disappointed at his chocolate eating performance, however. He did not bury his face in the cake as I imagined. He was actually kind of confused by it and entirely too delicate. But it was really fun to watch and equally as hilarious to clean up. A bath was had before bedtime.

There was a lot of diet-unfriendly food.

With the amount of wine I consumed once he went to bed that evening, you’d have guessed it was my birthday and not my son’s. After the way I felt the following day, I’m pretty sure booze is devil piss. A friend once said to me, “You don’t realize that you really need the babysitter for the following day as well.” So true. Devil piss, people. Devil piss.

Now it’s back to the basics—the grind. Diets need to be revitalized. I stopped losing weight weeks ago. (Still working out, however.) Em and I will continue our daily walks to the park and back. We’ll continue fighting with our neighbors because he’s a toddler living on the third floor. We’ll continue fighting with the men on our street, the ones who refuse to park their cars like decent human beings. We’ll continue our daily routine of chase the baby around the house to make sure he doesn’t eat cat poop. We’ll continue getting to know one another and I’ll continue to fall more and more in love with him. We’ll continue living here, doing this, until December when our lease is up and we have no choice but to get out.

The question still weighing heavy on my mind is: where will we be whenever Em turns two? Where will we be next year at this time? Will there be corpses near where he swings? Will he eat chocolate like it’s an olympic sport?

Where will we be when he sees 24-months?

The empty field next to that question leaves me pensive.