Snow snow snow

If Miss Murray looks miserable straining against her green leash, then you can imagine how unhappy many of my fellow New Yorkers were this Christmas weekend. People didn't have leashes exactly but there were plenty of peopling wanting unsuccessfully to go places and being totally unable to move. Kate and I have been travelling -- we spent a weekend in Nashville and then went back to New York and flew out from New York to Columbus, Ga for our annual Christmas caper. It's always wonderful with our cousins and this year was no exception. Arnie picked us up from the Atlanta airport and we arrived in Colmbus just in time for dinner -- good chili -- and lots of conversation. Next day was the required shopping trip with Lucy that I so look forward to at Target to check out their fleece collection and also buy goodies for Kate's stocking. A new tradition was born: the Christmas eve brunch and then midnight service with the best Christmas music ever brought us to Christmas Day! A joyful Christnas day and then Arnie drove to Nashville and Kate and I started home from Atlanta but this time we ended up in beautiful downtown Harrisburg, Pa because of the incredible blizzard that closed LaGuardia Airport. I am not the most relaxed traveller but Kate, bless her heart, is calm or seems to be calm which makes her a great travelling companion. We could have been in much worse quarters -- sleeping at the Atlanta airport -- but American put us up in a Sherton Hotel which had a good restaurant, flat screen TV and fluffy quilts. Girls night with movies and room service. But the next day we made the executive decision to take the train to New York which really worked out. Especially when I got an e-mail from American saying that they had cancelled our flight totally so we would have been on one line after another trying to rebook our flight. Kste had never taken a train trip longer than 1 hour so she announced that this was a better way to travel and that the seats were more comfortable. Besides which we had tickets for the Christmas show at Radio City music Hall so there was no way that we weren't going to be back in time for that or go down trying. We rolled into Penn Station at about noon and then Kate and I rolled our suitcases home over mountains of snow.

Free at last....

Caffeine

It's my drug of choice that I have been trying almost successfully to kick for many months. I radically cut down my caffeine intake without really realizing it by drinking decaf coffee which was labeled BIG and then turned out to be LITTLE in terms of buzz.

But today: watch out world. I'm really flying. I've had many cups o coffee most notably sitting in Starbucks this afternoon with a friend to revise my Linkedin page. I am quite superior and amazing. Officially. And, if you don't beleive me, just check out my revised Linked in page. Amazing. Almost walking on air because this is the kind of detailed writing that I hate but need.

Bring on the caffeine she said rapidly.

statistics

I'm trying to make sense out of some of these numbers: 3 boxes of kleenex used in a day and a half, 1 pound of beef fat found and purchased for a plum pudding, 4 miles of travelling in this freezing day....$5 spent on lunch...1 hour spent walking the dog...I think it's the 3 boxes of kleenex that really astounded me. If each one has 80 tissues in it, how can Kate have blown her nose 240 times.

This skewed picture of my life was capped last night with a manicure and pedicure to make sure that I have devine ruby nails on my hands and feet.

Single Parenting

when Kate was little I would categorize my mornings as those of a proud parent which meant that all went well from 6:00 am until about 9:00 am. Or I would call them single parent mornings which meant that the dog had thrown up on the white rug, Kate had melt down and I lost my temper. Haven't had so many of those days since Arnie and I've been married but now since he's mostly based in Nashville, those classifications came into my head.

Late Wednesday night Kate got slammed with doing more work on a project as part of a cooperative student project which in my mind more often than not goes severely wrong. Kids don't start those projects until 9 ish and then often something is missing. that was the case with one of her co-conspirators alledging that her computer crashed. Curious that she could still send e-mail. But anyway, Kate was furious because she had to stay up and write the first act of a play. She went to bed at 10 something and I got her up at 5:30 to continue with this idiocy. I walked the dog, went to the gym and when I came back to the house realized that a letter of explanation was surely in Kate's best interest for her very demanding English teachers.

So at 7:00 am I sat at the computer stark naked, swearing a blue streak, trying to craft a sensible, compelling and short letter for Kate to take into her teacher. Kate kept asking me why I hadn't used any commas -- because I do't take a breath when I talk -- and why I kept freezing her computer screen. I was almost finished when I discovered that I had spelled his name wrong.

So this time while the dog was perfect both of us had a melt down before we got out of the house. I'm not sure if we have made any progress at all.

Girls Weekend BlowOut

I flew out to Chicago for a fabulous girls weekend with Spooky who has been there working on a soderbergh movie since October. We walked a good half hour through Chicago, down Michigan Avenue by the Wrigley building and across the river
to get to a hoppin' restaurant on fRiday night. when we got home to her 33rd floor apartment we watched a huge snow storm come in and blanket the city. All very kool.

Saturday it was still snowing when we went out for breakfast and then a tour of Michigan Avenue's best. We had Gineen do our makeup while we dawdled in the cosmetics department at Saks, did a little Christmas shopping for our loved ones, checked out some old haunts and had a coffee at the Drake. A perfect day in a city which we both love. I've always thought that everybody in Chicago looked big and healthy and while that's true they certainly look big and fat to me now.

We went out to the North Pond for dinner on Saturday which was like dining in a small Frank Lloyd Wright cabin on a lake. All fabulous untilI had to come back to New York so that I could go to work....