The Long Weekend

Not the longest weekend mind you but a wonderful long weekend. It was wonderful to have 4 days away from the office and to chill out without having to travel any place further than 75th street nor to cook. Macy's blows up all their parade balloons on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving right outside the Museum and right outside my window. So cold weather with Irish mist not withstanding the entire neighborhood turns out to watch this annual event. I love it. I don't love coming to the Parade because it's crowded, cold, anticlimatic and I always worry about how I'm going to get home. Don't ask...

Thanksgiving Day was sunny and warm and the friends that we joined for Thanksgiving Dinner have an apartment with several fabulous terraces and so we were able to wander about outside enjoying the skyline and the sunshine. We so enjoyed being guests at their dinner: we came on time, were polite to everyone and came home at a reasonable hour with doggie bags. How thoughtful is that. Actually while I won't ever cook a turkey for Thanksgiving because I think it's too labor intensive for what it is, we did cook the turkey lurking in our icebox the next day and enjoyed that. Now for the sandwiches. The rest of the weekend was very laidback with trips to the Park with Miss Murray, ice skating and some time for all of us to chill out.

We also went to Chinatown with some friends who were in China with me in 1999 and we hadn't seen since the weekend before 9/11. We went to Chinatown for dinner with them and it's one of my great regrets that Kate doens't like anything about Chinatown; it's smelly, it's crowded, it's boring....not.

Then Kate had a playdate with her good friend Lile which made it possible for Lile's mother and me to have a a girls day, too. We went shopping at Lord & Taylor and had dinner at home with the girls safely tucked away in another room.

Heaven

Murder Most Rare

Murder most rare or something like that was the dream that Kate had. So if I remember what she said correctly, it was an adventure good against evil dream based on a fantasy book series she has been reading where she had to kill somebody with a grenade. How did you feel about your first killing, I asked. But he was evil and so I had to do it. How did you wake up from this dream? Oh, the noise of the grendade. I asked her to write it down so that she wouldn't forget the best parts of this nocturnal ramble.

Independence

When I was a camper at Treetops we all had double blade knives so that we could become champions at the game of mumbledy peg which I think dimly involves flipping your knife around and driving it into the ground. or that's what I remember about it. So when I thought about giving my daughter a knife at age 12 I had to acknowledge that perhaps I have infantilized her or at the very least am not helping her take responsibility for her own actions. How will she ever learn how to be responsible? I immediately scrunch up my shoulders when she wants to help chop something in the kitchen. Maybe she should just cut herself and then it wouldn't happen again. She wants contact lenses and i want her to keep her Metro card for longer than 2 months. I've told her now that if she loses the phone then it's gone. And if she loses her metro card again then she pwill pay for her own transportation to school. Or she could walk. And maybe I don't have to walk with her. See, that's where I think I become over protective. I don't feel comfortable with the idea of her walking to school alone because although she is 13 she looks as if she is 8!
So if she wants more grown up stuff , such as contacts and a face book account, then she has to be more responsible. Maybe I could just give her a pocket knife and see how that goes first.

Who We are

I can't quite remember why we started hauling out photo albums but much of the evening was spent dusting off big old leather photo albums that live right next to my bed in an old marble top chest which was probably used in the 1800's to store a slop jar. When we couldn't find the picture we wanted -- no clue at this moment about what that might have been -- we brought out the step stool and started bringing albums down from the higher storage areas. We have plenty of these jammed with photographs of me from infancy through adulthood, then with Kate's infancy and our expanding and continuing family life. But it was so interesting to watch kate leaf through these visual records of her life and exclaim every couple of minutes about how cute she was or how little she was.....She was totally disinterested in anybody other than herself. But isn't that the way we all are when we see pictures of ourselves? Everybody else in the picture may look great but if we think we look fat or we're having a bad hair day, then we pronounce the picture a clear failure.

Osso Bucco

Last night Arnie cooked a delectable meal of Osso Bucco and my contribution was risotto. Which Kate, our picky eater, wouldn't touch. i finally told her that everytime she deletes a food from her approved list, she has to add a new food. Talk about useless dictums.

This morning I took Kate to school which requires the bus and then a short walk. We have time to talk on the way to school and this morning she offered me her right earphone so we could share her music. I realized as I spun off from her school to go on my way to the subway that I had been doing this route for 8 years. Day by day it has sometimes seemed tedious, especially when it is cold and rainy, but on a sunny day it seems impossible that this has been going on over a span of 8 years.

Spaghetti Carbonara

Spaghetti Carbonara happens to be my most favorite pasta dish. It is actually my only favorite pasta dish. Many years ago I ate the best Spaghetti Carbonara ever in a fabulous chateau-like hotel in the South of France, and then kept trying to make it taste just like it did on a cold March night. I've recently been quite successful as a result of watching a french chef tackle this dish. So, long story short, we had spaghetti carbonara on Friday night to kick off the weekend and I was quite happy to have Kate declaim that it was a favorite dish of hers. Who knew! Especially she has just removed hot dogs, peanut butter and chicken soup with meatballs from her list of approved foods.

Saturday after soccer she went off to a bar mitzvah in Tribecca. Luckily we had dinner with friends who drive Kate to her bar mitzvah and then even luckier were able to pick her up when the party was breaking up. That was lucky because our Cinderella lost her shoes and came padding down the street barefoot. We heard this morning that the shoes had been found!

Role models

Last night Arnie cooked dinner for me and for Kate. Plus he made a delish dessert served warm that came out of the oven timed to be ready right after our main course. How is that for being taken care? Chicken with some kind of spicy rub, salad and potatoes followed by a cranberry/walnut souffle kind of thing.

All good as far as I'm concerned. Do I dare ask what's dinner tonight?

Veterans Day

A holiday for me and not a holiday for Kate. These are the good times. I wasn't able to sleep really late because Arnie and I took Kate to school so that we could be there to participate as Middle School reps at the 8:00 am. Waste of time but then we are just doing our good parent thing. I actually miss spending time at the school in marked contrast to the amount of time and social interaction I had with teachers and other parents during Kate's Lower School Career. In middle school there is almost a pushing away of parents which i think doesn't make fund raising sense.

Anyway we had a chance to wander through the Green Market, make some wonderful impulse purchases and walk home together which was really nice. I wouldn't want to do this every day because it would mean that we were retired! Aaagh. The city was getting ready for the Veterans Day parade and our conversations were occasionally interrupted by the roar of motorcycles streaming up Park Avenue to get into position for the Parade. A trip to the gym and then off to lunch with a friend. Again a perfect day but not one that I would want on a regular basis. A quick trip through Saks to see what the other half is wearing and then I walked home down 5th Avenue and watched some of the Parade. The bag pipers always make me cry because their sound is so mournful and speaks so eloquently of loss. More people were watching this Parade than in recent years...

Behind the Scenes

Our new exhibition on the Silk Road will be opening in the next week and all things professional are focused on the launch and promotion of this show. And on Friday a group of employee children were allowed access to the exhibition in return for the right to photograph them. I see now that the younger the child the more interest the photographer has in shooting them. So, kate at the ripe old age of 13 is no longer a favored model for either our in-house photog or for a New York Times photog who was also there working. We went on for a family dinner in the nabe and had a great time. Saturday was all about soccer for kate and Arnie and I went off to a conference and then we all hooked up again for dinner with friends.

Sunday was a trip to Chinatown to meet two sisters from New Jersey and to have a first lunch with them as part of a big sister-little sister event. And last night we watched Fame which was a mixed bag. Incredibly foul language which always make Kate freeze and a sampling of everything from sex to drugs and rock n roll. The question was whether or not this was TMI for kate. Hoowever I thought that every deviant act had a touch consequence so for me it wasn't optimum but ok.

Bugs

I haven't actually acknowledged this before but we've been having bugs in the house. It's probably not earthshaking but it's not always what you want to say upfront. Hello, we have bugs. Although I remember being about 4 or 5 years old and visiting my grandparents in Roanoke, Va and when I was introduced, I apparently told everyone that "I have bugs in my head."
Head lice knows no boundaries of age or geography. And god knows we've had run-ins with head lice since then. But not this go round. Rest easy everybody who has seen us recently.

This time it was beetles. We suddenly began seeing small black things on the walls or a gaggle floating heads up in Murray's water bowl. We had no idea what they were and how upset to get. They didn't suck blood so not bed bugs and they didn't make us scratch our ankles in that frantic way so they weren't fleas. But what? We asked the doormen who had no idea. We consulted with the handy man who had no idea. And even when put on the spot the exterminator had no idea. Luckily he was fired and the second exterminator took one look at our cache of carefully saved bugs and pronounced them beetles and in the second breath without even seeing Miss Murray, asked where we kept our dog food. Apparently they travel with dog food.

Mystery solved. On to the next exciting chapter.

Family Dinner

Even the title makes you kinda shudder, doesn't it? Well, we've had plenty of those dinners too where everybody has news that they want to talk about and absolutely zip interest in listening to anybody else. Of course the dining room table has also been a great teaching ground for a demonstration of table manners as well as what makes up a conversation. You talk, then you listen. Someone else talks and you don;'t interupt.

But last night it seemed to me that everybody was in great shape. When Kate talked about school, everybody listened and when Arnie talked about business, he too received respect in the form of listening. i was happy to listen to everybody because dinner was cooked and the rice was perfect when I got home. Who wouldn't listen under circumstances like those.

The only fly in the ointment might be that Kate has suddenly gone green and went around turning off all electrical appliances. Maybe candles will be next.

More Cats and Ghouls

I had to go to work on Halloween and then collapsed on Sunday after spending most of Saturday greeting ghouls and goblins who came to the Museum as a safe place to trick or treat. Lile and her parents come over to trick or treat in our apartment building and then stay for dinner. Great evening once I could slip my shoes off...And Sunday as idillyic -- can't even spell it because I so rarely use it -- because Arnie and Kate went off to a chocolate fair, to lunch and then to the movies. I thought I was full of energy until I didn't have to exhibit it and so Im promptly slothed out for the day. De-vine.

And this morning back into the swing of things. As I was walking Kate down the street to the bus stop we encountered one of doormen on our route who said "Wow! You've grown so much and I've been watching you make this walk for close to 10 years."

I love those conversations because it's such a wonderfully strong indicator of just what a small town New York really is. People know you and they see you even though they may not be in your face all the time.