OMG, Murray, it's reallu not nice

You have no idea how many times I have said just that to Miss Murray as we tested the air and found it incredibly cold. My walks with MM which can be a pleasure as we pass through the nabe are just agony with layers and layers of clothing and wispy pieces of fabric pressed into your face.

this is just one of those winters. But Kate and I have enjoyed the indoor activitires, been to A shakespearan play, gone to see the movie, the Kings Speech which she loved and read a number of books. This weekend I'm going to Nashville where I expect the weather will equally wretched and cold. But it's all relative becuase after several days of 6 degree weather, a day in the 20's is positively tropical.

Street Life

Yesterday was a veritable smorgasboord of city sights. The early morning cast of normal folk just working out was transfored by the apperance of several overblown body builders with tats, bulging muscles and black knit caps.

Then as Miss Murray and I rounded the corner onto Park Avenue at 5:30 am, I saw an older woman sitting quite comfortably on a folding chair that she had placed on the top of a subway grate so that she was warmed by the heat escaping from the subterranean tunnels!

Another beautiful day but very very cold....

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Busy busy weekend with a major and final test at Chapin for the ISEEEfor Kate as we go through this process of deciding where we are living and where she is going to high school. For the New York City schools it's all about crowded control and I suppose for the private schools it's the same thing. But Saturday we arrived at Chapin, sort of blast from the past for me because they were my arch enemies when I was at the Brearley. I and many other parents discovered on site that we were expected to bring proof of identity. Something which none of these hyper organized parents had known about because they changed their information format and had none of that information on the letter aka ticket for admission. So I am thinking OMG I'll have to go home and get some id for Kate, OMG we'll have to take the test another day when Kate was able to log onto her facebook page and prove that she was herself. Nicely done.

I got to spend time with Dorothy and be totally coddled with freshly made oatmaal, tea and generally sympathetic conversation. Then Kate and I went off to celebrate at McDonalds. She celebrated and I drank black coffee. An interim and then off to soccer and then back for a dinner chez nous with kathy and Buff.

But Sunday was the best for me. Kate went off to Chinatown with Melanie and I didn't. I didn't do a thing. Well almost nothing. I actually made a flying trip to Bloomingdales and what a luxury that was. I swooped in and swooped out without having to go to every floor and touch everything. My goal was to replace my favorite black cashmere head band and also replace my totally tattered orange suitcase. Successful on both counts and then I was whisked home to sloth out.

I'm having trouble reading anything but its probably because my internal life is chaotic. Balance. I need balance...

And tomorrow, I've just learned, is a snow day for Kate. OMG. I know I'll have to come to work but she, lucky duck, will be able to romp and gamble in the snow!

SNOW and more snow

It began snowing this morning at about 6 and the City looked beautiful because there was a sense that you could actually enjoy the snow. It's your friend. Unlike the snow that came down hard and fast over the Christmas weekend that seemed to be friendly and then suddenly turned around and took over the city.

Going to a gallery opening and then I want to go home and just read mystery stories. Kate has yet another test tomorrow morning and then it's all fun and soccer. Well, let me restate that. It's all soccer fun for her and for me it's hanging around an indoor soccer court! So fun.

Happy New Year to me and mine....

I spent last night trying to help Kate write a different conclusion to Catcher in the Rye. It quickly became apparent that I had read the book so long ago that I couldn't remember the end and certainly had no idea that everything in it was symbolic. Maybe it's better that I just read it in a clueless manner. In fact I had to ask what a catcher in the rye was. So you see. During this new term Kate announced that she studying World War 1 and she told me how interesting it was...And last week she started reading Sppok's gift, Le Petit Nicholas et ses copains, out loud with me and seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. We are not our children and they are not us. But I am knocked out by Kate's intellectual curiousity which I think only occured in my late 20's.

Bravo for her