New Year's Eve+

The dentist office was my first stop this morning to see the hygenist and have my fangs cleaned. All clean and sparkly and just in time for the new year. A quick trip down Madison Avenue to see if any of my favorite stores had started paying customers to take away merchandise. No such luck today in spite of the snow which made Central Park and the City look very romantic. And then on to work for a couple of hours before I turn right around and high tail it home to start the gastronimic festivities for the New Year. My biggest shopping chore to was to make sure that I had green grapes in the house. 7 green grapes per person. You need to eat 7 of them on New Year's Eve and then if you're really prepared you will have collards and black eyed peas on New Year's Day. The grapes are a lesson from the French and we often run screaming out into the streets at 10:00 pm looking frantically for grapes that are not already raisins. But this year I am prepared. Besides we need to lock in good luck for 2010.

These Fly bye Holidays

Snow was the huge agenda item last week and had I managed to get myself to a computer, I would have waxed eloquent about the snow. There was plenty of it. Finally the snow. But that was a sentiment pretty much across the boards here where every weather forecast during the last year hinted at snow, teased at snow and even promised snow but never delivered. This time the snow started on Saturday night while we were having dinner with friends and the short walk home was magical. Cold but magical. And then Sunday we took Miss Murray to the local park and dog run which pretty much exhausted her. We were afraid to strike out for Central Park for fear that we would run out of energy before we got made the round trip. We were especially thinking that we would never get a cab -- either going or coming -- with the dog in tow.

No work for me those days and I enjoyed sleeping late, going to the gym late and just meandering around town. Also some last minute christmas shopping. Then with all the snow cleaned up, we took off for Columbus and spent our 9th or even 10th Christmas there. Wonderful and magical for everybody. Dessert parties, BBQ, a performance of Peter Pan at the Springer Theatre and then Christmas, wonderful Christmas. Everyone seemed in fine fettle and the kids who were suddenly shy with each other came around and had a great time together. We are always thrilled to go and then thrilled to come home. In the meantime I always like to consider how it would be to live in Columbus. But again on the way home we had air travel anxieties because we left the day after a crazy Nigerian tried to blow himself on a Northwest airplane up as they made an approach into Detroit. The airport was very well organized and much better run than LaGuardia would have been.

Back at work and the Museum is so crowded that almost all administrators are hiding in their offices. We had a record 30,000 people in the Museum on Monday. Too many people for me!

Christmas Parties

Tuesday was the building's Christmas party which is always well attended by those of us with children. And this year there are a ton o kids. When Kate was younger, she was one of the few kids in the building, but now with so many children I really feel sorry for residents arriving home from work who then have to negotiate incredibly crowded and noisy lobby just to get to the elevators. There are tables set up with home baked cookies, tables with chips and dip, and tables with drinks dot the lobby and then there are the groups of children who go skittering around the adults and using the tables as part of their hide and seek games. Santa's appearance caused tears with some of the tiny ones -- what is wrong with them -- then there was the jolly entertaining with balloons alien -- no more scary clowns -- and the musicians playing.

This year Santa conifided to me that he was a little desperate about what to get Kate because although she should be aging out of this party, we all know it ain't gonna happen. So they took my recommendation and Santa got her a pretty spiffy tool belt! All well made tools on a heavy weight belt. Great for Kate. MIT here she comes.

Even since Kate was sick I've been worrying about getting her cold and then fighting a series of symptoms for days and yesterday it all hit and I stayed home. I even called the doctor who usually looks at me and says take 2 asperin and stay home. But this time I made my plan and arrived looking pretty grim and sounding pretty grim. But apparently the key question that I answered correctly was: Are you feeling better? Hell, no, now I have swollen glands. That was the $64,000 question and the prize was a presciption of zithromax. Yes, Lord. I was up and out of my chair doing a high five about getting those pills in their pretty little box.

Today of course I feel much better because I am on drugs!

Almost Christmas

It seemed too cold to us for a jaunt to the Park this morning with Miss Murray who badly needs excercise and at this moment thrusts her chew toy in my direction and basically forces me to play with her. But after a reality check, we decided that getting a taxi home on a busy work day would be hideous and bagged the entire thing so I had a wonderful leisurely morning. But then I had an amazing experience here at the Museum when I answered a question for directions to the Frog Exhibition posed by a visitor to the museum who turns out to be a Sister visiting from Paris. In just our short walk to Frogs, it was clear to me that she was n amazing and charming woman but then I ran into her again because Frogs was too crowded with kids to be really enjoyable for an adult. So this time we had a chance to talk again about living and working in France as opposed to living and working in the States. Just a great chance encounter which will give me an up for the entire day. I kept trying to figure out how I could keep her all day and just keep on talking. Great.

Busy day and then too many parties tonight. Our office party and also our building party...

None of the Above

We're still not all healthy it turns out, certainly not wealthy as of this writing and therefore not wise or we would be both healthy and wealthy. Doesn't that make sense?

We went out en famille plus Miss Murray to get the Christmas tree on Saturday morning and I recounted for Kate, as I do every year, the way my father and I would buy a Christmas tree. He would wear a homburg, heavy gloves and an overcoat as this was before the days of baseball hats, sneakers and jeans wore everywhere. And he would make the guys take out a number of tree, untie them and shake them down until we had one that suited us. I went through this charade which I actually enjoy and then move into haggling over the price. Fortunately or unfortunately the process of buying at the local store is far too short. Next year I think we will go to a more obscure spot run my Canadians and go through our performance. Our ceiling is so high that we either get one that is too tall or too short. I think this year our tree is a little too little. Then we went back to the house to get ready for our dinner guests.

We had 10 people for dinner on Saturday and Kate experienced first hand the rule of the mob. Three of these 10 were kids who were out of control and Kate was aghast I think by the manners of these kids. They kept looking in the closets, jumped on our bed and in general acted like kids. She was in charge as the old woman and I think she basically had a relapse and slept most of Sunday and this morning, still tired, went off to school. I think she will perk up immeasurably when she feels the energy at school and sees her friends. I did shanghai the i touch so that she is more able to focus on what is going on around her like making up a week's worth of homework. And last night we watched the film Stand and Deliver which like Freedom Writers had this message: Set expectations high and your kids will succeed.

We are into the count down week of pre Christmas stuff and it's all about errands now.

Healthy, Wealthy and Wise

Well for the first time in 6 days, we are all healthy and Kate is fever free. I hope by this time of the day she has also taken a shower, washed her hair and dressed! Its been a rough week and this morning was definitely odd because I woke up at 5, dressed, took the dog out, came back and changed into gym clothes, went out to the gym, came back, showered and then dressed to go to out to an early morning meeting. During this entire time nobody in my family was awake. I left everybody still sleeping at 7:30 and finally checked in with them about 8:30 to make sure that everybody was still alive.

Finally wore a real winter coat today and also saw the first phase of the moon this morning which looked romantic and beautiful.

Newspaper Delivery

Kate still sick with high temperature and home from school. This will make an entire week of languishing at home. This is the most time that she has ever, ever been sick and now she is still sick but also bored. Think I need to swing past the library or book store to pick up something to break her concentration on the itouch!!!!That wretched piece of electronic equipment.

We've been having trouble with our newspaper delivery and almost every morning has brought a new twist. Either no paper or the paper doesn't come until too late to be important or it arrives with a nice note and then only half of the paper is there...This morning I had a phone call from one of the owners apologizing for lousy service without a real explanation of why. But the key thing here is that they thanked me for being a customer for 27 years. Holy Cow.

The week that was

Raining. Rain, rain, go away, come again another day. Clearly I'm not a farmer and don't want all this precipitation. I wore my yellow slicker, carried a bright blue duck umbrella and tucked my feet into fabulous Lady Bug boots that Spook gave me and splashed my way to work this morning. I looked very much like a kindergarten teacher with my palette of primary colors.

Kate is sick. Temp 104 and that's always unnverving in a kid who talks all the time and is suddenly too tired to talk, or eat, or do anything. Even the itouch lay dormant. Today she seems better and her fever is down. But it's looking more and more like she will lose a complete week of school.

Museum interuptus

We lured Kate to the Museum of Modern Art with the promise of seeing a show devoted to Tim Burton who is to my mind, crazed but nonethe less brilliant producer of Nightmare Before Christmas. However although I think he is mad, I too like his creations and think the music in his films is compelling. All this to say that MOMA with its free entry policy on Friday nights was positively a zoo and so we had to quickly re group and come up with Plan B. My family was not cooperative with my plan B which was to go down a block or so and see the Christmas Tree and skaters and since Arnie was having some pain in his leg, we shuffled along slowly to dinner. Because although we had not been clever enough to make reservations or buy tickets for MOMA, I am usually clever about food and so we had a reservtion at Peking Duck which is one of Kate's favorites. Grandma Dot came with us but frankly I have no idea what was said during dinner. It's the beginning of the Christmas Celebratory season and there were a number of big tables with women who drank too much and then screamed. I almost leaned over and shouted in the ear of the loudest young woman that she was toxic noise pollution. I imagined how much pleasure this would give me and how shocked she would be....

Christmas shopping was impossible on Saturday because it was cold, nasty and rainy. So I holed up at home and on Sunday I actually cooked and we had guests for dinner. Kate came down with a headache and a little fever which she was able to ignore so as to play hostess to a 7 year old guest. Then as soon as they left she went straight to bed. And she is still sick with some temperature but it's the cough that concerns me. You know one of those coughs that sounds like you've dragged it up out of the basement so she is off to see Dr. Sue this afternoon.

Pretty darn proud

On our girls night out Kate came up to the Museum to have dinner with me and hear our good friend Richard Ellis talk about Polar Bears and their status as endangered animals. I was amazed that kate agreed to come and it had to do with the fact that she loves Richard more than anything else. She is highly ambivalent about the Museum, inspite of the fact that she is virtually growing up in this place, and often blows off any attempt on my part to involve her in coming here to see new exhibits, go to lectures, or participate in programs, etc. When she does come, she has a great time but the effort of luring her in is often tedius. She and I both had a good time. The next morning when I asked about how her HUR class was shaping up, she said, "Oh, it's boring and we're talking world issues like global warming." "But," I said, "we just went to a lecture about global warming." "No, it was about Polar Bears!"

I took the day off yesterday and had time to have a leisurely breakfast, play with Miss Murray, to the gym after the early morning rush there and Miss Murray and I walked kate to the Bus stop. Always makes me feel very suburban but of course if that were true I'd be driving rather than walking. At 12 noon I met Arnie and we went to her parent teacher meeting with her advisor Eric Quinones. He said this will be simple and easy: She's doing a great job. Everybody knows and loves Kate. She is doing well socially and academically. She is doing well in every subject and I'm happy to hear that she loves Latin.

How can you not qvell....?

Arnie and I went on to enjoy a celebratory lunch together at some wildly esoteric restaurant that I could find by using Google directions. Freemans restaurant is down on the lower east side tucked into an alley that runs off of Rivington Street. when you finally get there it's like being in a London mews. I thought immeidately: oh oh too charming and so the food will be terrible. But the food was really excellent and I would go back again providing that I could do it during the week at an off time. Then we ducked into a New Museum down on the Battery. A totally satisfying day.

Today we are going to take Kate and Grandma Dot out for a celbratory dinner to acknowledge her good work in school which is basically life...

The rituals of the season

Christmas cards are bought. Now it's up to me to go ahead and address them! The ingredients for a plum pudding are almost in hand and I signed up for Twitter. oh, that doesn't sound like one of the rituals of the season? It amuses me that we continue to do the tried and true: christmas cards and plum puddings and explore the new: Twitter. But I can't imagine tweeting every day...

Christmas shopping comes next and then kate and i always go to Radio City Music Hall to see the Christmas Show. Perfection.