Lean in and Grab it

Those are the words of our friend Dyan who is famous in our family for other quotable bits such as Crush him like a dog or Focus, focus, focus. And this time she exhorted Kate to lean in and Grab it. I like these mantras and find Dyan's passion amazing. She was our first guest over the 4 day weekend, with trips to the park with Murray first up on the agenda and it was %#&^cold and the snow had frozen into thick sheets of ice which gave me a sense of what the Antartic might look like. And it's still cold here. Yikes.

We got Kate a keyboard and she is as happy as the proverbial clam. My negotiation was that she would give me all her money, all $20 and then give Murray a bath every week until May. Actually she made some money yesterday helping Joe Gately baby sit and he gave her some money!

Really great design

well, anything Apple makes is both well designed and functional from the Mac pro to the iphone and i touch. But there are other companies that also do well and I just learned about Keurig yesterday. It's the new coffee machine in the office which uses those individual coffee portions and is amazing. The old ones used to have unstable cloth pouches but these little cups of coffee are efficient, fast and the coffee or it could be tea or hot chocolate is good.

Kate wants to be a desginer or an architect and I hope that she will always remember the design genius of Dyson with his vacuum cleaner and hand dryer. Beautiful with good functionality. If she does go to Brooklyn Tech then she may have a really good shot at this kind of career. We went last night for the open house for kids who have been admitted. The school has 5,200 students who go to high school in the largest high school in the United States. The open house was organized chaos and had no relationship to the polite, well organized school functions at Friends or Spence or anyplace that I know anything about. First of all the school is in Brooklyn and I always have meltdown going into Brooklyn and Wednesday was no different. Got out in a neighborhood that I didn't recognize but decided to follow a mother daughter duo that I decided were also going to Bklyn Tech. Lucky for us it was a correct supposition and we arrived along with 1,500 students and their parents. It was crazy and chaotic and Kate loved it. I have to keep reminding myself that I am not the one going to High School she is but how she got so old so quickly is still a mystery to me. And this high school sounds more like college to me. I worry because she is so used to Friends where they know when she has "forgotten" to produce home work assignments. In this place they won't notice anything until they give her a bad grade.

I just read in the Times that there are 80,000 kids who will be entering High School this fall. And Kate.

All that red must mean Valentine's Day

Ironically I was having a black pushback day swearing off black trousers and black sweaters which have been my uniform this fall and wintr -- how many times have I said that -- and came to work wearing red trousers and a white sweater only to discover that I was theme dressing. My mother used to send me to school wearing orange on St. Patrick's Day but then she was mean. So Mistake to be in red and white today. But in any case I look positively springy and the weather while almost tropical and in the 40's doesn't match the 60 degree temps that we had in Nashville yesterday.

Kate and I flew down on Friday so that she could interview for a place in high school -- OMG is it already HIGH SCHOOL? -- at the USN or University School at Nashville and spend some time with Arnie. As we landed I checked my e-mail and discovered that she had done well enough to be admitted to Brooklyn Tech, one of New York's prestigious special high schools. In a clear case of controlling access to the news, I quietly jumped up and down but we didn't tell Kate until Sunday. After all she needed to be able to spend the day at the University School without thinking about this great news. This test that she took in the fall is really like the blanc mange that ate London and requried tutoring, anxiety, etc. etc. Ok, we're finished with that and on Wed. Kate and I are due to go out to Brooklyn for an open house. This school has 5,000 people! I'm excited but not excited. I have no faith, ok I have little faith in the public school system....

Arnie and I had lunch with friends while Kate was touring the University school and then after all that good behavior and smiling it was definitely nap time for me. For dinner We took Kate back to a restuarant that we had discovered a couple of weeks ago and liked but I have to say that the second visit wasn't so successful. Nashville seems to have a number of high tech industrial looking restaurants with cement floors, high sound and buzz but after this dinner Arnie and I both thought the owner/chef would win an award for attitude because he wants you to know that he knows best. About everything.

Saturday was a beautiful blue sky day with time for rock climbing, more networking and then dinner with Beth and her daughter Tatum. Sunday we, read Arnie because I really don't drive, took Kate out for driving lessons in a parking lot. Gotta love that. All kids do. Then on for a celebatory lunch which had its funny aspects. We took a wrong turn along the way and ended up god knows where, until we found the restaurant which turned out to have an egg centric brunch menu which brought on sulks from Kate. Gotta get out of here. And then we sat on the curb in front of a bail bond office with a sign that said executions cause more problems while Kate found a restaurant using google maps. Hard Rock Cafe it was. Located in the most touristy part of Nashville and the food was grim. Why am I surprised. But the celebratory lunch itself was wonderful.

Urban mole

The solution to the proper ending for Miss Amelia Hamster's short but happy life was to have one of the building staff send her on a final journey. Happy trails.

Today is almost 40 degrees with brilliant sunshine and melting snow which made my trip up to the Museum from Union Square very colorful. I rejected my role as an urban mole, eschewed the subway and took a cab so that I could see everything and everyone. People were flooding the streets on their way to work. Park Avenue is a riot of color with giant red and orange flower sculptures which are amazing. Every store on Madison Avenue is festooned with red hearts and the whole trip was great. Tonight it is supposed to snow and rain.

I wasn't really looking forward to several of my weekend activites because...well just because. The first one was a shoping trip to help a friend nominated for an academy award buy a dress for the ceremony. Shopping is hard word but at 10:00 am in the pouring rain Trish and I had our noses pressed up against the doors of Bergdorf Goodman. Start shopping! This is the best store because it's where you get the most help from sales people who don't just point to expensive dresses but help you, get you shoes and offer to accesorize. Trish found a stunning coral dress which she may or may not buy. Standing by....

the rest of the day was spent in a pleasant kind of cocooning coma. Homework for Kate. I read two books and we totally blew off soccer.

Then Sunday Kate had a date to go to church with Alice and her family in Brooklyn. I detest going to Brooklyn at any time but especially on the weekends when the subways inexplicably stop running and the conductors start talking in tongues. Detour is the only word I every understand. We got up at 6:00 am so that we could get out of the house by 7:00 in time to arrive at our destination by 8:30. And while there is very little snow left in Manhattan, there is plenty in Brooklyn where the streets and sidewalks are still incredibly icy, slushy, and generally yucky. I wouldn't want to do that trip during rush hour but the views of the City on the way back are drop dead gorgeous because the J train -- who has been on the J train? -- runs above ground and you can see the entire city skyline. Quick drop off with Alice in Bed Stuy and then back to the house by 10:00 am. What a good mother I am....

Kate got home around 4 pm just in time for a round of festivities for Chinese New Year Lile, Maia and Rosie. It's the year of the Rabbit and in Vietnam it's the year of the Cat. It's amazing to me that these girls who see each other perhaps 4 times a year always have such a good time together. Worth organizing these trips and dinners at Chinese restaurants more often. The girls sit together at a table and the adults sit together which is a fine arrangement for everyone. I specially like the fact that the waitresses always come tell us what the girls have ordered....There is always surveillance.

Death of a Hamster

Snow, sleet and ice. More snow, sleet and ice. At least it's not the cyclone of the century that Australia is expecting. And now I don't care anything about Chicago and their snow storm. It's enough. even so my day had some early upheavals. I finally rousted myself from my nice warm bed to drag Miss Murray out to the streets. She refused to go more tan one block which was actually OK with me and then I went on to the Gym. I felt like a visiting dignitary because I hadn't darkened their door for a week. Welcome back stranger.

Got home this morning just in time to take a quick look at Amelia, Kate's hamster who was clearly in distress last night. Kate alerted me to the fact that she really wasn't moving. I touched her and found that she had a pulse, huddled in a corner, very shallow breathing and just not happy. What's wrong, Mom? She's dying Kate....So much for sugar coasting things.

And so this morning I found Amelia in the classic paws up posture. And then I really had to be the Mom again because Kate was grossed out and asked me to take care of her. So I produced my most beautiful silver shoe box with a red lining and carefully picked up Amelia and placed her amid some tissue paper. And she was stiff. Then we said some words about Amelia who had only lived sith us since Easter of last year but had a wonderful life. Kate played with her regularly, fed and watered her and also had an excercise ball so that she could roll around through the apartment providing Miss Murray didn't swipe at it with her paw. But all in all Amelia had a good life with us. And as I reminded Kate Amelia didn't suffer and neither did we. Of course by this time I was sobbing. Kate comforted me and took the box into her room until we can find a solution for the body. Because now my problem is what to do with the showbox/coffin which has a yellow sticky saying Miss Amelia Hamster, RIP.

It's too cold and snowy -- the ground is really frozen -- to take her to Central Park and dig a burial pit. We don't live close to a river where we could slip her in for a final sail. We could keep her in the freezer until the Spring and the ground is softe. No, I don't think so.

I think we will turn to Peter our very reliable handyman to take care of this probem for us. Any suggestions gentle readers?

Almost the tropics

I had my first piece of chocolate at 10am this morning. Not going to be a good day.

I had a great weekend in Nashville after I negotiated the airlines and actually got there. They cancelled my Friday flight that morning by robotic phone call and tried to push me onto am 8:00 pm flight which would have gotten me to Nashville at 10:00 pm. Too late. Too late. I managed to get myself on an American airlines flgiht which was a much bigger plane although curiously empty and arrived in time for all scheduled activities. The weather was so warm there that people were pushing the season a little I think by wearing shorts but I was totally supportive. when I lived in London I was forever talking about going to Portugal so that my bones would get warm. I never did. I kept on going to Paris and stayed cold. This past week I was thinking fondly of some warmer climate and the beach so Nashville was a pretty good stand in for warmth. We went to visit the Belle Meade plantation, which is now the center of some of Nashville's and the country's most high priced real estate. On to a new hot restaurant in the germantown neighborhood which actually was very New York in ambience with a high tech factory setting, ambitious Tuscan food and incredible noise. All good.

Home again to the cold. Yesterday I was really dragging my feet and hating my coat which is warm and heavy. But then I've complained about it before. Endlessly.

Had lunch today with my cousins Lucy Banks, McKay and one of his Middlebury friends Mitchell. Had just a sip of a Margharita which saw me through the afternoon.