A Mind & Body Day

Went to the gym this morning (I generally go 3 to 4 times a week). Not sure I see continuous improvement, but it makes me feel virtuous, so I can enjoy my nightly hot fudge sundae guilt-free.
This evening, Sallie and I are visiting Phyllis. She deals more with the mind, than the body.
All that's missing is a full body massage and a brain twister.
Sound mind, sound body...there ya go. It's all about balance.
Not sure why I posted this, other than its the Slate-Katz Family blog, and I'm noticeably absent from the posts.

Rubix cube

We did it. We did it. We really, really did it. Well, to tell the truth Kate did it. She worked out -- with the help of the internet -- how to do the Rubix cube. And as is so often true, it was peer pressure that fueled her interest in "winning." If a kid at school could do it, then she thought she could do it, too.

That was her triumph. My triumph was that she ate two helpings of quiche for dinnerlast night and never knew that it contained eggs. My life is far more simple than hers.

California Dreamin'

When I was a kid I would have a recurring dream about being on a train going through the hills of India with women in bright blue and pink saris.

And over the weekend I had a great dream that I kept repeating over and over in my head when I woke up so that I wouldn't lose it. The average time to remember a dream is about 50 seconds and then you forget it. Not this one. It has all the hurkey gurkey quality of dreams where nothing runs together in a seamless manner so bear with me. I was in Paris with my mother and went out in the dark morning light to find coffee and croissants. And every place that I went seemed not to be serving food and was badly lit. So I finally found a place to buy coffee and then I didn't have any money so they prepared whatever it was in tinfoil while I went out to change money. Then I went to find my mother and walked around the edge of cliff -- you see I said it wasn't going to be logical -- and suddenly everything was in technicolor. Across a body of water I saw an amusement park with ferris wheels, steamboats with water guysers shooting up into the air and everything was incredibly festive which made me laugh out loud. Buttes Chaumont. That's a park in Paris and thats the name that came to me. I don't actually think it's an amusement park but still thats what I called it in my dream. When I finally saw my mother, still clutching the coffee and croissant in tin foil, she didn't speak to me but merely raised her eyes in the direction of the clock to hammer home the point that I was late. Really late. Same day but late.

I woke up with a feeling of such pleasure at finding such a great park and began to plan on going there immediately.

And, see I've ever remembered the dream for several days.

Gold Wrapping Paper

Kate told me this delicious story with its O. Henry overtones on the way to school this morning. A woman worried about money bought some beautiful Gold wrapping paper that she was saving for a very special occasions. She became very angry when she discovered that her daughter had taken the paper to wrap a gift. "Why did you do that?" But the gift is for you Mommy. When she opened the gift from her child she discovered a small box but when she opened it, there was nothing in the box.
"when you give a box as a present," she said to her child, "it's usual to have something in the box." But Mommy, I filled the box with kisses.

kate delivered the final line as she got out of the cab this morning leaving both the cab drive and me speechless.

Devine Dining

What kinds of meals stick in your mind? One of my favorites was grilled bacon and cheese on an island when I was a 12 year old camper in New Hampshire. I actually remember that it wasn't actually good but I was cold and hungry and therefore it was delicious. SoI'm not sure if all the devine french food that I love so much with the unctuously smooth sauces and layers of flavor really takes the Memory cake. Don't take that away from me, please. But this morning I had one of those signal meals that I'll remember for a long time. I had to go to work at 4:30 am to be a presence and problem solve on the spot for a major TV shoot. So believe me when I tell you that it was cold. Snow on the ground, crunchy ice or that terrible saltm wet puddles of melting stuff. It was beautiful because the sun wasn't up yet and the snow looked untouched in Central Park. 18 degrees. Cold and dark. skinny runners would move on past the front steps of the Museum and totally ignore a 50 ft crane being put in place or the crowd of teamsters working there. So cold. Or have I said that? Then it was windy and finally my feet in my wonderfully warm Canadian boots began to freeze. No feeling there. My face was long gone and I shuffled off balanced against the wind to the crafts service truck that had just started serving breakfast on the street. It's about the wind and ice again. So I bellied up to the crafts service truck behind a group of hulking teamsters who were all ordering breakfast. Where are the ham and egg sandwiches on a kaiser roll of yeteryear. This group was ordering Egg White Burrito, Egg White Wrap with ham, spinach and cheese. And I gotta say, Me, too I said in my most authoritative fashion. Egg White wrap with ham, spinach and onions. I was dying for something hot. 2 minutes later: Presto
Here's you go. And there I went. hot, steaming, tasty and large. I really had no idea what I was eating except that I kept inhaling clouds of warm steam that were easy to chew. Bad black coffee. More clouds of steam. Yum. That's meal that I will remember for a long time.

And unfortunately when I order it again someplace it won't be nearly as good as that first eggwhite wrap with spinach, ham and onions.

The first week of January

Well, it's a little bit like how I spent my summer vacation: On Monday morning, I dutifully went downtown to 100 Centre Street to report for Jury Duty and sat quietly for two days fretting that I would be put on a jury and fretting that I would NOT be put on a jury. Not enough time or too much time. I think the way to feel good about the system which I might eventually use is to serve on Jury Duty but nobody really wants to do it. Arnie is to go next week so I've ordered from Netflix a copy of 12 Angry Men and hope that Kate is old enough to be caught up in the dialogue and shifting premises of this movie.

So I sat in jury duty with my fellow . What I call boredome broken up by intermittent Vietnamese meals. I love being down town with the freedom to wander around chinatown without the hordes of tourists. I found the crackers that we all love, puerh tea and other assorted yummies including dumplings. I actually love Vietnamese food and there is a wonderful cheap dump right near the courts.

There was of course no work going on in the courts during the first two days of the first week after the New Year. And I was dismissed on the second day. But as we were being dismissed by one of the court officers, he said, we were holding you for a double homicide down the hall but the preliminary work is taking longer than we thought. DOUBLE HOMICIDE? MURDERERS USING THE SAME BATHROOM? MURDERERS WALKING THE HALLS. That's when you get that it's serious.

So that was the first two days of the week. And on the last day of the week, that would be today, Kate and I left at 7:30 am in sub zero temperatures to go to Hunter College on 94th Street to sit with 1,999 other smarty kids for a competitive exam for places at Hunter High School beginning in the 7th Grade. Kate was excited. I was stressed. Kate was getting herself in the zone and I was beginning to cry. Maybe I was crying tears of relief because I didn't have to take the test which is described in all the Hunter literature as the hardest test you'll ever take.

The test is really an important watershed. It's great practice for Kate and it's already given her a sense of confidence in her own abilities. If she passes, then she has the option to go for the interivew and consider going. I know Arnie will really push for her to go to Hunter if she can and then I can continue my illicit affair with Mr. Bergdorf and Mr. Goodman. Or I could be a grown up and save money for Kate's college so she can go where she wants, and not be forced into going to a bad state school. Hmm, the endless round of choices about growing up or not and making better choices. And she was talking about options this morning so that was another series of Life Lessons that she has internalized.

But then if she doesn't win a place at Hunter, she can just go back to Friends. All round a win/win I think.

nEW yEAR'S eVE

Well, it came, we drank, we talk and we ate and celebrated with friends and then everybody went home early. Lile stayed for a sleepover which was Wonderful. Then both Kate and I were sick again. Too boring.

Home for the Holidays

I guess we're still in the middle of the holidays because we're still doing it. We've travelled to Georgia, spent time with family, been sick, enjoyed Radio City Music Hall's Christmas Show and experienced a deb cotillion. Today I'm enjoying a Mom day at home with a sick child. Kate is never sick. But she is today. And I'm never home. But I am today. And it all reminds me of being sick when I was a child which is when I think my Mother was the nicest. I got to stay in her room, listen to soap operas on the radio, and be a queen propped up in her bed on thick pillows and watching the activity of the household swirl around me. And maybe because of that -- or not -- I was sick a lot. Kate is rarely sick and has thrown up only twice to my knowledge. So when she says that she doesn't feel well, I pay strick attention and poor kid she has the same stomach virus that I picked up in Columbus. But our cousins are made of sterner stuff because they just kept on going through incredibly hectic and exhausting times. I started mainlining Pepto Bismal and looking wan. That's ok because I shed 5 pounds, it's just sad that I will probably find these 5 pounds again waiting for me. But for Kate I'm also really wanting her to be on form because she sits for the competitive entrance exam for Hunter next Friday. The pediatrician recommended what I call the white diet which is bland food, bed rest and something to ease her stomach cramps but there is clearly no medicine for this. So irritating because I wasn't sick enough to be out of it but never well enhough to be seriously in it. I began to dispair that I would ever be well. And everytime I felt better I managed to inhale a cheeseburger and then feel ghastly again.

I kept imagining that it was the food I ate in Columbus. We left New York in really freezing weather and landed with a full schedule de rigeur parties, luncheons where we were served Gumbo, Chili, cheese grits and plum pudding. It's amazing what you can eat when you feel well. Burp. Oh, yes, ham biscuits were the flavor of the evening for the Cotillion where Lucy Banks made her last bow as a deb. I think the season in Columbus is far more serious than it was in when I was az deb in New York. I had two parties and thought that they were both great to the horror of my parents. However they nicely went along with this. And John and Lucy also went along with a Lucy Banks interest in being a deb but in smaller communities it has much more of a pot latch effect. I had a great time and know that Kate did. Arnie started to crumble under the feeling of being in a totally alien experience and I think worrying about Kate as a minority. She was oblivious to that aspect and I reminded Arnie that I've been to several bar miotzvah which are totally alien experiences to me and I survived.

Then as soon as we got back to town, Kate and I had our annual outing to Radio City Music Hall and I was tickled to think that she still wants to do this. I love it and think it's a great mommy daughter outing. She wanted a hat filled with cotton candy which she wanted more than she wanted to go to Bar Pitti. Big surprise to me. But ok. Then when we left she wanted to take a pedi cab but that was fine with me because I knew our dinner out would be at the local coffee shop. And when we got to the coffee shop, she took one look at the menu and said she wasn't hungry. AZ perfect evening because we both got what we wanted.