Eureka

I know it's not going to make me seem like a nice person, oh, no, but I was ever so glad this morning to glide out of the house and leave the chaos, the water pouring over the kitchen floor and the smoke billowing through the house behind.....when Arnie came back from taking Kate to school he asked me what was burning. Oh, my god, I thought I left the kettle on again....Not this time. The dishwasher had streaks of black indicating an electrical fire, the water was pouring all over the kitchen floor and the maintenance guys were moping for their lives. So happy to look helpless and leave, checking in later by phone of course with just the right degree of concern in my voice....

Bye bye dish washer.....

Spring Fling

another Mommy Daughter weekend with Arnie in Virginia with David. Not so great weather because New York is firmly in the grip of March-ness. But this time I didn't plan so much stuff and consequently the whole weekend flowed a great deal better. Not possible again to go to the Park with Miss Murray who is severaly starved for excercise about now. But the gym for me, chinese for kate, a massage for me and then a round of Monopoly for us. Luckily we had to pick up and go to movies -- I was losing and badly -- because I was convinced that there would be no seats for some new 3-D movie which I eventually thought was a snore. That was practically the day and then we went out for Peking Duck and had quite a grown up evening. Kate was the costume designer for our evening out and we wore matching costumes in pink and black, I think. Quite fetching.

Spring

everyone in New York is desperate for spring with flowers, warm sunshine and air that doesn't make you hunch down protectively into your coat. Well today seems to be it. It's just gorgeous and I took the bus across town which gave me a great view of the Park and the many thousands of people already enjoying the playgrounds, rocks and rills. Kate and Arnie just called from the boat pond in Central Park to boast about their afternoon activities which seems to be gently rowing a boat.....Zounds.

watershed

I didn't even know what a watershed was until I and everybody in Miss Rouner's 20th Century History class flunked the question about watershed events in World War 2. Who knew what a watershed was? Not me and not anybody else in my class.

But now I know and Saturday was a watershed. Kate took Miss Murray out by herself. It was also the first time that she had been out of the house by herself. Big times in the hood. She was thrilled and felt ever so grown up. I was thrilled and so relieved that nothing untoward happened. I think I started going down the block, across the street to the store, etc. when I was 12 or maybe younger. But certainly in New York the spector of Etan Patz is always there. But I always remind myself that his parents let him go out when he was only 5. It sounds absurd now...anyway moving right along, this was a glorious first step.

And then Kate and Lile took Miss Murray out again and made it all the way around the block!

The Final Indignity

Snow this morning. That was just enough. Yesterday there were restaurants all over town putting out tentative little tables for lunch as a way to catch the heat and sun starved eye of New Yorkers. And this morning: SNOW.

It's gone now and good riddance.

Wobbling toward the end of the week and the beginning of the weekend with plenty o activities. I think I'd like nothing more than to snuggle into bed and read. I'm beginning to think this is my usual call. I don't even feel much like cooking. I used to be a really good and innovative cook and if I do one small thing now I feel as if I'm a cordon bleu chef. But the truth is I think it's pretty mundane. This weekend I'm doing ribs and my cordon bleu gesture is biscuits. Last night my gastronomic gesture was to quit cooking....Hardly the stuff of legends...Oh, maybe I'll turn that surfeit of strawberries into a mousse. Now, that's the stuff of legends.

Road Trips

We're trying not to spend money in a careless fashion but apparently road trips do not count as careless entertainment. I'm all about it. Easter Weekend we're going up to the Cape where I plan to walk along the cold, crisp EMPTY beaches and enjoy the sound of silence. We're staying in a very big old fashioned hotel that I somehow remember my grade school friend Carol Cox talking about. It will be a long drive up to Boston and beyond but I think we could both use a change of scenery.

Then a couple of weeks after that I'm taking a girls' road trip and going to Miami. How sweet is that.

End of Season Soccer

Kate started her spring vacation on Friday and so we let her sit up with us
and watch the tv program "Bones." She has been complaining that ALl her friends get to stay up and watch a whole array of programs that are totally off limits to her. My response is always that every household has different rules, etc. etc. So because it was a celebration she watched Bones with us and one of the story lines quickly turned into a visit to a strip club with shots of pole dancers and an awkward interview with a very buxom and scantily clad lap dancer. Aaargh. That was embarassing and something I would not have chosen for her to see. No more late night TV for her.

We all had a great weekend and everyone seemed jolly. I like these vacations, too because it means that my trip to work is much easier but of course this week kate is in soccer camp over on the Piers. Not so easy.

Oh, yeah, and the punch line to all this was that Saturday was her last soccer game for the season which they finished undefeated.

Now I can take back my Saturday evenings.

Long week

The week started with a 4 day shoot for an Ugly Betty film crew -- seemingly thousands but in reality only 150 -- in the Museum which occasioned lots of extra hours, hurt feelings among some Museum department, and exquisite amount of detail work.The Museum was dressed like a scene out of CandyLand aka Alice in Wonderland with pinks, yellows and easter things with faux bunnies. It seemed like that went on for ever which it didn't but certainly it was all consuming.

Finally the end of the week came and we all had a celebratory rack of lamb dinner together on Friday and then watched Pride and Prejudice. Excited out of my mind that Kate enjoyed it. Too early for her to read Jane Austin exactly but I'm thrilled.
Thrilled.

Mommy Daughter Weekend

With Arnie in Phoenix/Tucson, Kate and I had a weekend in town together and then absolutely lucked out on the weather with New York having unexpectedly high temps. Of course we mostly missed the great weather because so much of what I had planned was in doors. And then when we could have taken Miss Murray for a romp in the Park, we both slept late on the morning that the clocks turned ahead leaving us with no time to go uptown.

Ah, well.

Chinese lessons, jazz concert at the Rose Center which was greeted with boredom and complaints because she was sure that her school musicians were better pushed some of my buttons, and then a trip downtown to play soccer. A perfect day. More or less. And Sunday was full of swimming and lunch with Grandma Dot and then some very much needed down time for me. I had a very busy week and have another very busy week coming up with a 4-day shoot with the crew of Ugly Betty taking over much of the Museum.....

Tonight Kate and I are having a dinner out at our favorite Village restaurant which makes both of us feel good. I haven't cooked in days and might just cotinue that....

The Tuesday Bra

The kidlet came back from a weekend in the Hamptons with long time friends and showed us her stash of new goodies from a belated Christmas and birthday celebration. In among the clothes and I-Dog was a new item of clothing. A bra. Which our friends thought I might find provoking sice they stole my thunder about having a mommy daughter day. Well, maybe just a little. Of course that wasn't my experience growing up with my mother that I remember with any fondness or nostalgia. I cant even write about that experience in public.

So, my push back was to insist that she learn how to wash her underclothes. And I dragged out soap and nail brushes and set a very fine example. Kate wore her clean bra the very next day and when I asked if she had washed it out at night. She said, no, I've just thrown it into the laundry. So both Alice and I have called it the Tuesday bra which is only to be worn on the day after Alice does the laundry!!

DAMON RUNYON

i really hate computer passwords. And i hate this computer we have at home because of course its very different from my computer at work. So it took me far longer to log on this morning than it should have. The whole process was complicated by not remembering my password for this computer -- My passwords are Shaker-like in their simplicity but that doesn't seem to help either -- and then because of the snow all my family were within sight of my struggles to log on. Many helpful suggestions, some snarky conversation and 10 minutes later I am on. Thanks to the help of my husband.

Everybody in New York has been yearning for a serious snow storm that would produce the magical cry of SNOW DAY but for far too long it's been a string of highly publicized snow dustings rather than snow storms. Until today. And even then I have an uneasy feeling about this snow storm. I think it's something of a fake. Everybody was in position, poised and ready for this 10 inches of snow. I woke up at 3:00 am to check it out and while it looked ok, it didn't seem to me that there was enough snow on the ground. The sidewalks were covered but the actual streets looked passable. The snow ploughs kept going up Madison Avenue and then I could hear too many cars travelling at pretty fast speeds. A perfect snow day is quiet. unnaturally quiet and the lone vehicles that you hear are travelling slowly - very slowly. Then you can make snow angels in the middle of Madison Avenue....But the school cancelled classes, the public schools cancelled clASSES which meant Alice would not be able to come, and so I cancelled that other part of my life. And soon we are going to go out and enjoy this SNOW DAY in the Park like the New Yorkers that we are.

Speaking of New Yorkers I read something about Damon Runyon's language and the force of his prose this weekend. They quoted a sentence that I've been hugging to myself all weekend about "Moose Molloy who stood out on a Los Angeles street like a tarantula on a piece of Angel Food Cake."

I wish I could write like that.