Break down

I once saw a t-shirt that said Getting Old is not for Sissies. Well, who has a choice these days? At our house right now it's all about breaking down. Well, it's Arnie, poor guy who is breaking down because he pulled his back working out at the gym and now all he can do is take pain killers. It was a beautiful day, although too hot too fast, and Kate and I went off to the Park with Miss Murray leaving Arnie behind in his bed of pain. He was able to get it together to go to his new Photography course which sounds great and also like something I should have done last year when I got my new camera which I still don't know how to use!

Then the other breakdown was the dishwasher which was just replaced yesterday. I thought it was sort of instructive to have to wash the dishes and to have everybody cooperate with the dinner, breakfast and lunch process. But in the end I morphed into my mother and kept holding up all the washed glasses and inspecting them in the light. Soon I would have been convinced that we would all die of dirty dishes...So now we have a new pristine worker bee in the house.

Discovered a new dessert this week called Mango Sticky Rice and soon I will know the secret of how to make this amazing taste sensation. And soon I will probably explode from an excess of mangoes and sticky rice. But what a way to go.

Homework

when I was a kid -- how many stories start like that? -- when I was a kid, I just did my damn homework. I came home from school at 5:00pm and went directly into my room and didn't emerge until my homework was done. Sometimes I had dinner with my parents and sometimes if they were going out then I got to eat dinner in front of the television. That doesn't sound good. No more memories like that please

Now as a result of Kate's cavalier attitude about her homework; school is boring, homework is boring, everything is boring....Arnie gets to take over supervision of her homework. They review her assignment book and then review the finished work together. Which I think is brilliant.

I knew there was something else I wanted to rant about. And it was dinner. Here too I keep harking back to my own childhood. I ate what was put in front of me. Grudgingly and probably haltingly. But I ate it. And when my parents ate really disgusting stuff like kidneys or pigs feet they let me off the hook. I ate something benign. So in my effort to avoid gastronomic ennui I try to provide a wide variety of foods but this is probably more for Arnie and for me than for Kate who seems to thrive on Mac n cheese. She would eat that 5 times a day, 5 days a week. God knows. Actually she is an eater from the 1950's. Add lamb chops, pork chops, steak to her list of preferred foods and you are home free. Last night I tried a vietnamese dish with a chicken soup cooked with ginger and rice, side dish of poached chicken with a great dipping sauce of lime juice, ginger and nam pla....Yuck said my daughter. Well she said nothing but contorted her little face into a classic moue of dispair, distaste and disregard.
How could she not eat a soup that was practically congee? somehow I was really cranky about that last night and when I found her supplementing her daily food intake with an apple, ginger ale and cheecans....I took them away. Ok, I'm over it now.

the weekend of Spring

The weekend dawned bright and sunny with promise. Now I should lurch into a paragraph of purple passion....well, no.

Saturday was summer. Everybody took to the streets and walked about. We took MM to the park with great pleasure and spent a great deal of time there just drifting around. Kate then had HOMEWORK and Chinese lessons and we went off to the lower east side to look at dish washers. I always like the idea of these pieces of equipment but then when I can't buy top of the line quickly lose interest. It will wash the dishes and i wont. That's all. So it really doesn't pay to have dish washer envy. People out and about, side walk cafes doing land office business and kate doing HOMEWORK. Arnie and I went off to the park and left the child doing HOMEWORK. Something to be said for homework and more homework. We had a slap up dinner courtesy of a gift certificate which allowed us to get dressed in our best bib and tucker and go out to pass amongst them. Great night. Again it was summer.

Sunday dawned cold and I was suddenly exhausted which didn't make the end of my weekend anymore cheerful. Especially since I had to go to work. And then I hadda go to the gym which I hate doing by myself.

And now it's Mondy morning and the summer is gone.

Reality Check

the reality check came as we drive back into the City and picked up the mail. Hmm, it's Kate's report card with some disturbing comments about her attentiveness to her day job: Going to school. And after a stern talk about a test that her teacher said she might fail....I relaxed. Because I had done my best parent act. Until we got to school later in the week to have a face to face with her home room teacher who also said alot of words about lack of attention, diligence or lack of and general suck attitude. The parenting dillema kicks in. Am I right in my approach or is my husband right in his much tougher approach. Will the child care how much money we spend on her education? No, but she might pay attention when we pay glaring and focused attention. Which was how yesterday seemed to have worked out. Another merciful day at work for me so that I didn't even have to agitate about how to approach the subject in a helpful or unhelpful manner. It seems clear to me that they will all go into therapy so I might as well go ahead and make the mistakes. So I just forgot about it. Well, I did check in several times to make sure that there were no bodies strewn about the house but all seemed to have been copasetic.

We like copasetic.

stripped down weekend

A stripped down weekend means no responsibilities, no child, no dog, no dinner parties, no cooking, no extraneous family. Just me n Arnie, 5 books and the open road. It's a road trip and we made it up to the Cape in 5 hours. Well, he did. he's the chauffeur and I'm the friendly and attentive passenger. The only irritant to this journey was that my phone rang off the hook...And finally when I answered it to hear my boss' voice screaming that he hoped that I had my cell phone in hand. Clearly I had it. And then I made the required phone call to a New York Times reporter who was doing a story for the Times web site about Ugly Betty and why this and other TV shows have filmed at the Museum. I sit in on interviews all the time and if you do too many with one person, then you know all the answers as well as they do. Better. And know that you could do it better. But this time it was Me and I really enjoyed it. I was relaxed but not so relaxed that I was stupid and so we'll see what comes out of this. Hopefully my 3 sentences will not end on the cutting room floor.

Stayed at the famous old Chatham Bars Inn which is quite beautiful and really well appointed. Now a member of the Leading Hotels of the World hotel group, everything about it was done and done well. I remembered this hotel from a wedding that I went to more than 10 years ago on a warm summer day. That was then. This weekend was cold. I lived in a yellow slicker jacket with a number of sweaters. I immediately decided that I would live there. But now of course I'm home and don't want to go back to Chatham at all. It was quiet which was my agenda and sigularly without people. Out of season is a blessing. Walked along the shore, Arnie ate lobster, we explored, and read. So while I'm always happy to leave the City, then I'm thrilled to get home. There is so much real estate up for sale that it gives you whip lash as you're riding through some of these very pretty little towns. Unemployment on the Cape is 11%. We had a chat about where we might live if we didn't live in New York and frankly it's just not a viable conversation with me. It's just here. Staying someplace else in a hotel for a month. Done deal. Living there? No way.

Intolerance

Kate has just started to read The Diary of Anne Frank in school and so the timing of Passover is a wonderful one. We are celebrating tonight with some friends who live down the hall, and while it's not my celebration, it's great to be a part of this rite of passage. It's time for Kate to understand some of the lessons of biogtry and intolerance. I've ordered a couple of films from Netflix that I think will speak to this subject and was just reminded of another one called Paper clips....

March Madness

and it's not basketball that I'm talking about. It's simply the lack of warm sunshine and the everpresent wind that continues to make us all hunch over as we walk around town.

We are taking a weekend together and going out of town. I had visions of an isolated beach on a day full of chilly sunshine but now I fear that it will be raining. So, next year it will be Puerto Rico. But in any case I'm still looking forward to a drive up to the Cape. Well, actually I'm the passenger and Arnie is the driver...

And this week we will all celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. I think that's a great celebration to have and we are all looking forward to it.

April Fools Day

So the dish washer is totally shot, beyond repair, kaput. and most of the electricity in the kitchen is out too because of the electrical fire that thank god we avoided because we were in the house and simply opened the dishwasher which stopped everything except the flood. It gives me the willies to think about what might have happened had we not been there. our neighbors were displaced for almost 9 months by an electrical fire and I beleive that their dog is totally gaga because it spent too much time in the kennel. Saved. Now we are camping out in the apartment more or less. Don't want to be too dramatic about it. but no electricity and no water in the kitchen so we are feasting on paper plates, knives, forks, you name it.

ok for the short term.