I will change the pictures -- i promise

but the truth is that I don't know how! Woe

It's almost Christmas. Last week I thought Kate and I would have a cozy girls evening and go buy a Christmas tree from the local guys on Park & 34th Street.  We wanted the experience of picking out the tree and carry it home. It was a routine that I remembered so clearly from untold Christmas tree buying  expeditions  with my Dad who was always well turned out in an  overcoat, hat and I don't mean baseball cap, and gloves.  That was how I saw the evening until Kate turned up at home with a couple of  school friends and looked surprised when I asked what Adam and Kyong were doing at the house? Going with us  to buy a Christmas tree, of course.  Hmm. Lets be open to a mid course correction here. Ok. lets do it. So we picked up my trainer Nick on the way cause I thought that without Arnie's help I would need extra hands. You know, where everybody helps carry the tree through the darkened streets with a light dusting of snow. ok, that's for books. Nick got the tree to the apartment house and then Adam and Kyong helped set it up. It was a totally different and wonderful experience. The guys worked really hard and we managed for the first time in years to get the tree up with an exquisite ornament that Arnie and I had bought several years ago. Normally we forget to put the top on until the tree is halfway decorated. It was sad to see how many of our old christmas tree ornaments had broken, especially the glass ones from World War 2 but there are still ornaments that I remember from my childhood. It is a living history tree. And this year I found tinsel, lots of tacky wonderful tinsel. I had trouble for several years finding any, and of course, blamed its paucity on environmental whacks. Maybe I was just late in buying it.

The tree looks wonderful.  It is Christmas. I have distributed my version of largesse to all the doormen. I made the requisite plum puddings with more brandy and beef fat than anything and sent them off to Columbus. Once I read that a pair of Victorian explorers had taken off on a cross Siberian trip with only plum pudding as sustenance, I became interested in plum puddings again.

This morning I had to track down an errant side of smoked salmon that had gone missing from Columbus. Just heard that it arrived. Paid some taxes. going to the gym. Having a  manicure....And transplanted a tree. Now that really was a first for me.

Nostalgia

My saturdays when I was a kid were very very simple. I listened to a radio program whose theme song was the Teddy Bear parade which I knew by heart. I listed to it from the safety of a large armchair and then who knows what else I did. Probably I spent the rest of the day at home. As a teenager I'm sure I was more active but there were no tennis lessons, piano lessons and frequent trips to Broadway shows. It's not as if we lived in Smallville, USA it was just a different time with different expectations about what activities kids might have. Maybe I am jealous...

This morning Kate and I went to a really professional Wall Street sound studio so that she could record  piano piece for a CD done by her music teachers. Then she went to fencing and after 2 hours doing feints she went  off to the hair dresser to have her hair dyed pink, I think.

Definitely jealous. I would have looked great with pink hair or even blue.

Early role models

It's 60 degrees today. And it was 60 degrees yesterday. How can anybody even question the probability of another Sandy like storm? Now I have my new batteries, my coleman lamp is on its way and I am a champion toilet flusher. What else could a girl ask for?

This weekend I rediscovered my enormous love for butchers and butcher shops. Arnie and I had a full round of dinner guests and veal took center stage at most of these meals. So off we trotted to the Florence MeatMarket on Jones Street to buy plume de veau veal. I had pre ordered osso bucco but then thought I should also buy a breast of veal and god knows what else....We shopped for bread and cold cuts at various shops on Bleecker Street and then headed home with our ample provisions.

On Saturday  I went downtown again for the Florence Meat Market to buy veal for a Blanquette de veau on a really early on a foggy misty morning.  My earliest role models were butchers and door men because they were the authority figures in my life. Butchers were big red faced men with large knives who ruled over their shops and handed out Bologna to kids. In fact the Lexington Meat Market which was two doors down from our apartment building was boycotted by Liza Hennessey's mother because they sold black market meat during the war.  The other major figures in my life were Doormen because they were tall and very imposing in their long dark green coats and caps and they would always refuse to let people park in front of the apartment building!

At 8:00 am I had the butchers all to myself as they worked cutting, slicing, dicing and preparing cuts of meat for me. Then I strolled down a totally empty Jones Street Saturday to go buy bread at Murrays. None of the stores were busy with the exception of Faicco's which already had  3 guys buying meat and coldcuts.

I am trying to persuade Kate to go with me  and I am using the lure of the butcher's cat as my prime persuader!