Are We There Yet?

Just dialing in my old new york lady bona fides

2026-05-24T13:27:47.884-04:00

Incident #1:

Wednesday evening, I was sitting in a lovely venue with blond wood paneling watching this big gala presentation. They were presenting some very heartfelt awards. It really was lovely don't get me wrong but just suddenly I was like... I gotta go.

I'm cranky and tired and surrounded by just too many part-time real estate agents and cliques of longtime friends all hugging and squealing and yeah. I was suddenly hit by a solid wave of longing to be in my own home in a pair of more comfortable pants.

But: Colossal Problem. I had seen the gift bags they were planning to hand out after the event that included a fancy little box of non pareil chocolates.

Non Pareil chocolates. You see the obvious allure.

So I sat in my seat for an extra ten minutes trying to puzzle out how to both leave immediately and also get the chocolates you were only supposed to get at the very end when all the normal polite people left en mass. They didn't even have the bags out on the table by the door yet.

Right? Just a massive conundrum which I had the fortitude but lack of grace to be racking my brain over.

Anyway, in the end, I just walked up to one of the kids working for the caterer and said I had to leave and could I get one of the bags with the chocolate. Kid didn't even blink an eye while making it happen. I love the youth of today enabling me to have my irish exit and eat non pareil chocolate too.

Oh, and then this happened:

My friend Bruce lives around the corner from the venue...
in hindsight my old lady bona fides would have been a 10x if I'd actually gotten him to bring me an umbrella.

Incident #2:

The next evening, Thursday, I attended an aggressively posh dinner on the 32nd Floor of Rockefeller Center. It's the location of this "salon dining club" with a michelin starred chef and a sommelier and if you have private equity amounts of money you can host your private five-course event there. It's an open question how I got invited but I am very good at taking advantage of all the amenities.

After the last course (Port and carrot cake with a tiny yellow flower perched on top of a swirl of cream cheese), me, my friend Lee and his friend Avi decided to go out for a cocktail nearby. There was a cocktail bar I'd had my eye on, but it was closed so we went to another place. We got nodded in by a bouncer and trudged up two flights of stairs.

Huffing slightly, Avi said, "I didn't realize there were this many stairs."

At the top, I took one look around and declared the place was too loud, too crowded and smelled like stale beer and I did a 180 back down the stairs. Avi gave me a look but I peered down my nose at him.

Then we tried to get into Bar65 at the Top of the Rock, but I have lived in new york way to long to pay for a TICKET AND an overpriced martini. I will never pay for an elevator ride. I also will not stand in line, and there was a line.

After my snort of pure distain at the very prospect, we all marched back out onto the street. Which was surprisingly crowded at 11:30pm on a random Thursday --- city that never sleeps and all that.

Then there was another place with a pretty nice outdoor area they said was closed, but we could sit inside with everyone screaming at the Knicks game on TV.

No thank you, ma'am.

At this point, Avi says, not unkindly it was more of a factual observation, he says, well, we need to go SOMEWHERE!

Avi clearly suffered a lack of appreciation for my extensive efforts on my his behalf and also how many bars there are in new york city.

Luckily right down the block there was another place that had a perfectly acceptable booth and decent ice cubes.

The Print Show at PowerHouse Arts

2026-05-17T21:34:55.077-04:00

We wound up going to the Print Show at PowerHouse Arts even though the last time I was at PowerHouse Arts, and I could be wrong about this however I didn't bother to look it up as usual, but I'm pretty sure last time I was there, the entire PowerHouse Arts premises were about as big as a not-so-big book shop.

So yeah, I was totally worried about going the whole way out to god knows where in Brooklyn to a show we paid in advance to get into, and then have it be like five sad vendors jammed in a not-so-big bookshop, and maybe one of them is selling home remodeling and another other one is chasing you around with perfume samples.

Heads up: Powerhouse Arts has moved. And it's an upgrade.

Now they have a huge warehouse-ish building and therefore this print show was impressively large and well curated. Worth the trip and the price of admission in other words.

After a lot of thinking and circling back, we purchased two prints. One of them was fairly gigantic and in a frame. This created the major urban conundrum which is: Subway? or Uber?

At first, we were both full on Team Subway, but after hauling the huge frame simply down the elevator and out the front door of the building, it became clear that attempting to get its weight and sheer dimension five blocks and then retracing our steps up and down the escalators and through crowds at Atlantic Station where we barely knew where we were going and had walked maybe 1-4 miles through some atrium with a lot of doors that morning on our way to the show.... yeah, we selected Uber. XL mind you. I know, the big bucks.

Our XL vision of maybe some kind of hulking black monstrosity with a gigantic freshly vacuumed carpeted rear hatch and leather seats may not have fully matched reality. The Uber (XL) driver showed up in his family minivan and we spent at least 20 minutes rearranging the yoga mats and beach umbrellas and a few sad looking frisbees to wedge the frame into a mostly stable horizontal position. I guess taking a car still was the only sensible choice but all I'm saying is "Uber XL" means many things to many people.

We got home with zero damage to the art or the car is probably the happy ending.

So anyway, we'll be back next year. In the meantime, here's a selection of hastily taken photographs of some of the booths so you can decide if you want to come along :-)

These are pretty cool, especially all together like this.

Who doesn't love a fox?

Reminded me of Jellicle Ball -
did I mention I saw that show on opening night?

I liked the details on this.

We bought this one. I LOVED IT.

Sweet like a children's book.

We bought the alligator print up there on the top.

Every Brilliant Thing: Now and A Decade Ago

2026-05-10T17:43:00.020-04:00

A play called "Every Brilliant Thing" is currently on Broadway. Matt and Helen went to see it.

Playbill from Every Brilliant Thing on Broadway.

So look, I'm only mentioning this so I can be one of the cool crowd who talks very knowledgeably about some show currently on Broadway because they also saw the original and/or earlier revivals. My friend Danielle from book club and her cousin Greg do this. They hammer through a detailed critique like it's a dereliction of duty not to give excellent notes.

For example, out front the theater after we all saw Gypsy last year, both of them launched into comparing and contrasting Audrey whatserface with all the prior leading ladies they'd seen portray Mama Rose using words like "vibrato" and "mezzo soprano."

I think Danielle said she'd seen nine (9) different Gypsy productions. NINE! Her dad was on the Tony committee so she got an early start.

So anyway, this is my one (1) time to shine and I'm taking it like the brilliant thing it is.

So yeah, ten years ago, Tom and I saw the ORIGINAL version of Every Brilliant Thing not on Broadway but in Greenwich Village. The show starred the guy who wrote the play.

And oh, yes, I scanned the playbill and kept it on my computer because yeah. It was a beautiful and haunting one-man show. I felt it warranted taking the time and effort to rip up the playbill into single pages and jam them all into my scanner hoping I got out all the staples but not really checking because I know how to turn anything into a huge extravaganza with high stakes.

Every Brilliant Thing Playbill from 2015
in the Barrow Theater in Greenwich Village.

There's audience participation, and during the production we saw ten years ago, Tom and I were *both* selected to read one of the brilliant things, as per the title of the show.

On cue, Tom read:

Things with Stripes: Definitely Brilliant!

Oh that's right, I also scanned the cue cards we were given to read. Of course, I did not scan any of these items at the same time, which meant they were not on my computer in the same place, named in the same way and in any way easy to locate just now. Because I am a martyr for my art.

Should this blog meet that qualification which I truly doubt.

Anyway, I read:

the prospect of dressing up as a Mexican Wrestler.
Definitely a Brilliant thing!

When I read "the prospect of dressing up as a Mexican wrestler," I really emphasized the "prospect" part of it. I just felt this is what the line called for.

After I read it, the one-man of the one-man show literally paused for a moment and told me I had read the line like a chef's kiss. He said something about how, yeah, it's all about the PROSPECT of doing the thing, more than the thing itself.

I played it down, but secretly it was all very thrilling. It's the closest I will ever get to... I was going to say Broadway and that might be fair in this instance but it's also probably the closest I will get to like Greenwich Village theater or maybe even community theater. So there's also that.

Besides the two Brilliant Things that Tom and I had the vast honor of reading, my next favorite brilliant thing which I remember from ten years ago was "Christopher Walken’s hair."

And that is particularly apropos to this very minute because literally yesterday, Tom texted Helen this meme after she said she went on a 4-hour birding tour in Central Park:

His hair is still Brilliant.

I say all this to say, after I got home from the theater ten years ago, I made my own list of Brilliant Things. Here they are. Not sure if all of them hold up:

The shoemaker who used to be on 7th and moved to 8th and who delivers my shoes to me after he fixes them and his prices are much less and he does better work.
effortlessly finding the lid to the tupperware.
finishing something.
cow costumes. friends in them.
japanese food in a small private cubicle.
swiffer picker uppers.
Reading books in bars with wood paneling.
Places that smell like eggs frying.
Moss-scented breezes.
when your plan works out.
accidentally meeting up with friends.
friendly vampires.
men wearing red pants to a picnic.
a new tube of chapstick.

Spring 2026. Phoning it in.

2026-04-18T20:27:00.011-04:00

Look. I don't know if Spring 2026 deserves a blog post more than any other season of any other year. I just started to get antsy after not having written a post in over a month.

I have discovered there's this weird out of kilter sensibility when one has had a blog for 20 years and then one ignores said blog for a time period that is longer than the normal cadence. A vague sense of unease sets in. Now, don't get me wrong:

This does not, dear reader, constitute any sense of obligation to any of you, or even all 7 of you. I don't flatter myself for one major reason.

99% of this blog's visitors STILL arrive because they clicked over here hoping to determine if Cher is really an Indian (as she claims in the maybe or maybe not eponymous song "Half Breed.")

Then they encounter this blog post.

The Cher blog post from 2013
that STILL gets hundreds of hits a week.

One of two things happens when the unwary scour the world wide web and wind up over on this decade old Cher post:

Visitors either immediately bounce and this website never sees them again.

OR they get mad and write me comments pointing out all the fatal problems with my "research," which they apparently take as a full-on scholarly pursuit that is not unserious in any way.

For example, here's one apparently glaring problem: I wrote that if Cher were really a for real Indian, she'd know how to ride a horse.

This is really discriminatory, according to many commenters. Not the "Indian" part which no one has heretofore mentioned (and in my defense the Cher post was written in 2013 well prior to anyone discovering that Columbus reached a new world and not, in fact, Asia).

But the problem is this: Apparently, some very well credentialed, we're talking card carrying Native Americans cannot ride horses. Turns out, they may not have access to a horse. Even if you live in rural America, horse maintenance, housing, upkeep and vetrinary services are too expensive for all but a privileged few Native Americans.

So yeah, this been the biggest critique of my investigation. Me assuming that all Native Americans ride horses or potentially even commute on horseback in this day and age -- this is frankly ludicrous in the face of actual facts such as this video clearing showing someone of declared Native American decent heading to work on an alternative mode of transportation that is not in any way a horse:

https://youtube.com/shorts/lcWA2wEFkeY?si=Aa1IsjMobebq8NZL

Ok well, this post went off the rails. So much for any documentation of Spring 2026.

Honestly I was intending to write about a bunch of the art exhibits we went to, or maybe our trip to Scottsdale. Or how we just got back from the Jackie Robinson museum.

OR - this might have been the best idea. I could have written about the incident when a news camera crew guy mistook me and my friend Bruce for a married couple (neither of our husbands would be too thrilled if this were the case).

The news crew wanted to interview us about Bruce's dog, who was dressed up in a cute costume.

I said, "oh it's not my dog," and the camera man goes, "Well you look like a couple!"

He had this accusatory tone, like it's our fault he was confused.

I blurted, "well that sure says more about you than it does about us" and stalked off down the street.

Bruce, of course, took the interview. His dog is in fact way too cute to miss an on-air opportunity.

Having a chat with Swedes in Minnesota about a missing head (of a statue)

2026-03-15T22:42:00.011-04:00

A photo of an example of a bust on a pedestal in a park.
I edited it so you can see what it would look like without the
bust statue on top

On the second Monday every month, there's this so-called "Pratstund" where a group of Minnesota Swedes and folks of Swedish descent have a Zoom where everyone speaks Swedish at wildly variant levels of fluency. Somehow I got invited a year ago and I show up periodically. Meaning twice in total. The second time I made an appearance was last week.

So I get on the video chat and the main Swede is talking about a BFD that recently transpired in their little town. It was front page news. It went down like this:

The town had been founded by Swedish immigrants in the 1800s or whenever the Swedes were in the business of founding towns. There was one gentleman in particular who idk did a lot of founding-type work and so to honor him in the early 2000's, the town erected a bust of the guy and put it in the town square.

Five years later, someone stole the head. They made off with the bust under the cover of darkness.

Good news! The town had insurance and the sculptor still had the mold so a new head was commissioned and erected on the pedestal.

Life goes on for fifteen years, which brings us to January 2026.

Right after the new year, someone left out front town hall, in an IKEA bag mind you... the original head.

(In an IKEA bag! I could barely control my face.)

Here's what I believe is the head. I found a photo of it.

So now the town found themselves with two heads. There was a meeting to decide what to do with the original head, which was no longer needed since the pedestal had a new head installed upon it and the town is too small to have two busts of the same dude.

The town decided to host a lottery and raffle off the old head. A local indoor market won the head. They are going to put it in the lobby area.

Honestly I was on the edge of my seat while this whole dramatic true-crime tale unfolded. Then one of the women asks if the chicken was good at the restaurant.

Because yeah. Wildly variant levels of fluency. Points for the main Swede for being lovely and kind in the face of total low key chaos.

As for me... I might just come back next month.

I'm convinced the Frick reads this blog, that's all I'm gonna say

2026-02-22T22:27:00.007-05:00

Headed out into the tundra
to go to the Frick Museum

As per my last post, it was cold AF in New York City. I decided this might be a rare occasion to break out my grandmother's "knee length" blond mink coat. *For anyone stymied right now, let it be known that while my grandmother had an aggressively large personality, she was really really short.

But yeah it's still a gorgeous coat that was made by my great grandfather for his daughter... my great grandfather being a furrier and all. My plan was to wear this coat so as not to freeze my ass off on the way up to the Frick, the perfect gilded age destination for a person in such a coat. So on brand.

I get up there, I meet my friend Anna and together we go inside. And here's how I know the Frick reads this blog, specifically the earlier post here, where i rant specifically about four things at the newly remodeled Frick:

1) Somehow, you keep winding up in the Frick lobby and then you have to dig out your tickets again to show the guard to get back into the museum part of the building. Like 3-5 times a visit suddenly you find yourself out in the lobby again.

2) There's no coffee cart, and then there's this huge empty space where there used to be a coffee cart, but now stands barren while we all die of thirst. Why is there no coffee cart in that spot?

3) There's no signs on anything, and no one tells you you cannot take a photo until you find out the hard way when you get scolded by a guard for taking a photo.

4) There's a line to get into the extremely small gift shop.

Well lookie here... when Anna and I exited the lobby thru the doorway where the guard scans your ticket, they now give you a ticket bracelet! So convenient, when you wind up like a magic trick back in the lobby every twenty minutes you can just show 'em your wrist!

A fancy "ticket bracelet" - functional and
also has a gilded age vibe.
Well played, Frick!

Also, further evidence the Frick has carefully considered my advice: THEY PUT THE COFFEE CART BACK. I know. I am a woman of influence and power.

(It will destroy my narrative to address #3 and #4, so I will fully disregard. I'm sure they're working on it.)

So anyway, I swan past the guard feeling extremely pleased with myself for having enhanced the Frick visitor experience considerably with my well considered suggestions AND in a vintage blond mink coat to celebrate my triumph.... Immediately I started to cackle. It blew the whole vibe, trust me.

Because every third person in that place had the exact same idea. It was like a fashion show for all grandmas' vintage fur coats. One woman marched right up to me and we had a whole conversation about our coats. This happened maybe five times. Anna just rolled her eyes. She had on some kind of newfangled performance fabric and could not participate.

After one woman walked away I told Anna that her coat was coney. Floor length sure but yeah. Coney. I don't even remember getting taken aside as a kid and getting taught to not only identify, but also roll my eyes when it's just simply not the right kind of fur. But indeed, my grandma was a furrier's kid who married another furrier's kid, so I guess it's not maybe all that surprising. It's just a funny feeling when your genes are screaming with opinions.

It's f*ing cold outside in NYC, there's snow and also Tom took a photo frame out of the neighbor's trash

2026-01-31T20:55:00.006-05:00

First of all, it's ridiculously cold outside. I never wear long underwear and I've been wearing long underwear. In fact, I wore a pair to a big business meeting in midtown last week. At the outset, this seemed like a great idea, but about half way through the meeting, I got really hot.

Originally, my plan had a hukana matada vibe. Like, I thought to myself as I got dressed, stuffing myself into my long johns and my dress pants... if I get hot, i'll just go to the bathroom and take them off and jam them in my handbag.

I want to just say that this plan falls into the category of "great on paper, doesn't hold up irl." Like there's logistics involved. You have to take off all your pants in the ladies room balancing in one shoe due to the gross floor, and then come back to the meeting with a giant undergarment in your handbag. It's a challenge of both balance and storage capacity.

I say all this to say, we've been spending a lot of time indoors. Apparently so have a lot of people, you know doing a little sprucing up, clearing out, etc.

Late this afternoon, Tom came whipping back from taking our trash down the hall to the garbage room where the trash chute is for our apartment building. There's the chute, and then people just perch other crap they don't want to throw down the chute on or about the vicinity. Despite the big signs to not do this, mind you. Apparently none of us can read.

So Tom comes flying back down the hall with a couple of really nice black framed photographs that apparently one of the neighbors left in there. Well, the frames were really nice, the photos are slightly dubious but maybe they'll grow on me. Here's one:

The neighbor's photo of beer in an
expensive metallic black frame that is now ours.

We will probably hang it up in our hallway. We'll say it will be temporary until we find better photos or artwork, but it will likely take us 5-10 years to get around to even looking.

So then we spent the better part of the afternoon cracking ourselves up while considering the prospect of us having the neighbor over, and he/she goes down the hall and sees their trash hanging proud as can be right next to the bathroom.

We decide we can never have the neighbors over.

I mention this whole thing to Darcey and Matt and Helen in a group text. Darcey replies:

Right, Darcey once took a whole frozen turkey out of her garbage room, but she says she doesn't talk about it because it makes her husband Kent go "a little sideways." And ya know, I get Kent's concern tbh.

Then I sent to the group, apropos nothing really, a photo of a giant pile of snow on 10th Avenue up by London Terrace. I mentioned it's cold as fuck, right? Well also there's snow piled up all over the place.

One of many giant piles of snow
in Manhattan right now.
This one is taller than a car!

So then Matt replies:

Ha ha ha.

Matt replies, "Is it just me or would that picture look great with a nice black frame around it?" Hilarious, what a call back.

NaBloPoMo Day 30 - The GRAND FINALE 2025

2025-11-30T13:06:00.176-05:00

Ermagerd, I made it! I really did not think I was going to succeed this year with the one post a day for 30 days quest. As they say, I've been busier than a one legged man in a kicking contest. NaBloPoMo 2025 felt very unachievable.

But then, I wound up finding this lovely group who are all NaBloPoMo'ing too. All of us with our old school blogs coming together with old school comments on posts. Discord? Ha! We sniff at the Discord:

https://theinbetweenismine.com/nablopomo/

These are good people, I enjoyed being a part of it.

And I did it! 30 posts in 30 days.

Now look, at this point I do have techniques. I set up the photos ahead of time. I sandbagged some posts in September and October. I'm no NaBloPoMo spring chicken is what I'm saying. I know a thing or two about how to get the job done.

And so, we celebrate:

I could not be more pleased with this bath bomb.
I'm positively irradiated.

Nothing says NaBloPoMo success like an Elphaba bath bomb from Lush.

(This is not actually an Elphaba bath bomb from Lush. Well, it's a bath bomb from Lush but I made up the Elphaba part, it felt timely. This bath bomb is just #nofilter Leprechaun green AF and struck me as appropriately celebratory.)

Thanks for hanging with me!

NaBloPoMo Day 29: Seeing Monet In Venice in Brooklyn with Renya

2025-11-29T18:08:00.102-05:00

Renya and I made a plan to escape Work Island (which is what the kids call Manhattan these days, I learned that eavesdropping on the subway). We excursioned ourselves to the outer borough of Brooklyn to go to the Brooklyn Museum and see Monet in Venice. The whole way there on the 2, Renya and I cackled about Work Island. It's objectively hilarious.

So we get to the Brooklyn Museum, go up to the exhibit. Here's the rather morbid opening salvo:

MEMORIES OF VENICE

The moment has now come to leave this
unique light. I’ve spent some delightful hours here,
almost forgetting that I’m now an old man.
—Claude Monet

Venice resonated with Monet’s artistic concerns and practices, enchanting

the artist with its iridescent light, ephemeral atmospheric effects, and the

interplay of stone, water, and reflection. Like the Giverny gardens and pond

he designed to provide painting motifs, Venice’s architecture rising from the

lagoon offered a confluence of art and nature. The city symbolized both the

suspension and passage of time. Monet faced a similar temporal paradox:

an “instant” took a long time to capture in paint.

Monet told his dealers that he would bring back only a few canvases of

Venice, just to “have a record of the place.” His plan to return to the city

ended with Alice’s death, and the works he started there in 1908 remained

untouched until 1911. The artist thought of her constantly while completing

the paintings in his studio, refining and harmonizing the effects he had

first perceived en plein air. Balancing observation, sensation, imagination,

and painterly expression, he created a modern and personal vision of Venice,

imbued with his “memory of the happy days spent with . . . dear Alice.

Lots of pastel.

So yeah, Monet's wife Alice died either in Venice or right after they got back to France. I did not know this before we went.

I also learned that Monet would move around the same buildings and paint them from different spots in the different light. Like he had five canvases of different angles of the same building or maybe different buildings. He would walk around and paint each one at dawn. Then do the same circuit at whatever midmorning, coming back at sunset. He was doing the painting thing like it was his job, in other words.

...and so the water lilies came to be.

The only thing I really knew going in was Venice was where Monet really went throw hot for painting water. He got really into it. So he probably would not have gotten masterful enough to finish painting all those water lilies had it not been for Venice. Apparently he started the water lily paintings before he left but just couldn't get them right. Alice was annoyed at him for poking around with them for so long.

At the end of the exhibit when we exited through the gift shop, they had a photo booth. Renya and I looked at each other - totally, why not. I loved the photos we took. It cost money, don't get me wrong, but good on the museum figuring out how to level up their merch game.

NaBloPoMo Day 28: Breathing with Sandy. I'm 100% in.

2025-11-28T21:44:00.106-05:00

Sandy rarely wears a shirt.
https://www.breathewithsandy.com/

It has been a revelation, this Breathing with Sandy. Don't get me wrong, I have been doing the box breathing every now and then for a while. But I never realized there's a whole fandango of different breathing techniques until someone recommended this kinda unusual book called The Presence Process.

I feel bad calling it "unusual" because it is a beloved book that has transformed a lot of people's lives. But it's one of those books where, when you're reading it, you feel like you feel when you find yourself somewhere you didn't expect to be. Like at a rave surrounded by folks in velvet vests dancing with twinkly lights and there's a pond and someone is in it riding an inflatable swan. I appreciated the book and the Process but it's definitely one of those right time, right place, right person kind of affairs.

So anyway, spoiler alert, part of the Process is to do this "conscious connected breathing" for 15 minutes twice a day for ten weeks. I was game, why not. But then I couldn't manage to do the conscious connected breathing for fifteen minutes all on my own. I also couldn't manage to do it twice a day. Or often once a day. But yeah, no worries, this is what Youtube is for, and so... I found Sandy. He has some conscious connected breathing classes.

By the way, if you can manage to do conscious connected breathing for the full fifteen minutes with Sandy or however you manage to do it, you kind of hyperventilate yourself into an unexpectedly great mood. I am now totally sold on the whole "breathworks" thing.

In fact, I'm so sold I'm out there talking about breathing and Sandy with anyone who will listen. I was having lunch with Renya last month and successfully proselytized her. We both donated to Sandy's Patreon. We are patrons of breathwork now.

Tom says he enjoys Sandy's classes, but he's neutral on the shirtlessness.

NaBloPoMo Day 27: The wranglings of Thanksgiving

2025-11-27T21:45:00.016-05:00

So we had 14 for Thanksgiving dinner. We started doing the holidays at our place after that one year, early on, when we found ourselves in the car at 1am on Christmas Eve.This transpired because Tom's parents are divorced and apparently whoever Tom spends more time with on Christmas Eve is the one he loves the most. So yeah. And this was after a bunch of Thanksgiving drama.

So as we were driving through the wintery darkness so many moons ago, I said to Tom, It's your fault they got divorced, why am I suffering?

(I didn't actually say that line, it's part of a Nate Bargatze comedy special, but I expressed a similar point. It just took me probably about an hour.)

Anyway, ever since then, we hunker down at home and tell anyone who wants to see us they need to come by us. That's it. And you know, I think it's lovely. I hope everyone else does too. 20 years later, I'm thankful for them making the trek.

Happy Thanksgiving!

NaBloPoMo Day 26: The Beautiful Dinner

2025-11-26T19:40:00.002-05:00

Tom made a beautiful dinner

Look at this dinner!

Color me lucky :-)

NaBloPoMo Day 25: An old photo of my grandfather

2025-11-25T21:37:00.002-05:00

My grandpa, age 2

My mother texted over this photo the other day, apropos nothing. I guess she was cleaning out boxes. I had never seen this shot before. Meanwhile, I have this one in a frame:

Grandpa was very athletic.
Played football in college.

Some things you don't realize until you're old enough to realize such things, but he grew up fatherless. His dad died very young, so he was raised by his single mother. At some point this historical point of interest turned into an a ha moment for me. Here was a guy that as a child experienced the death of his father, the family breadwinner.

As an adult, I can think back and see the trauma kind of buried in his persona. Don't get me wrong, he was beloved; but he also had a hard edge honed sharp probably as a survival mechanism. He grew up too soon, lived through the Great Depression, fought in WW2. He made a life for himself really against a lot of odds.

NaBloPoMo Day 24: That time when Marjorie was going to throw away a bag of pennies nickels and dimes. Maybe even quarters.

2025-11-24T21:36:00.002-05:00

The end of the penny brings up old memories.

OK so this was decades ago but still lives rent free in my brain. I was so jaw on the floor flabbergasted gobsmacked with disbelief... my Pennsylvania Dutch heritage just did not know what to do with itself.

I was moving out of the dorm freshman year at college. And yeah, I went to a fancy college with many very rich people. People so rich they honestly had no idea how the normal folk went about their daily lives. I got invited to go hela-skiing, was given someone's "old" wardrobe when she got a new one for spring, and had lots of dinners at 9pm which might have been the most mindbending of it all. Farmers and steelworkers are in bed by that ungodly hour for chrissakes.

Anyway, we were moving out of the dorms freshman year and Marjory takes a huge glass jar of pennies and other loose change from her room and just chucks the whole thing in a garbage can in the hallway.

Thunk.

I'm speechless. Can't even talk. She threw away money.

I go in the garbage can and take out the change jar. Completely shamelessly by the way the whole thing struck me as total sacrilege and I may have saved her soul.

If I was writing a movie about nepobabies I might go with this as the first scene, just to set the stage.

NaBloPoMo Day 23: The Weird Transaction that occurred while purchasing a gigantic bowl

2025-11-23T14:35:00.000-05:00

Speaking of the gigantic bowl in the gift shop at Olana, it had a koi decorative motif. I asked Tom if he wanted me to buy it for him for Christmas and he was into it.

This is not the actual bowl, i wrapped it up already, but it's close.
And similarly gigantic.

See what I mean? It's big. There's koi.

I hauled the bowl up to the cash register. It was heavy this bowl, and also not cheap. The cashier lady, who was objectively odd, scanned the price. I tapped my phone.

Then she said, "Would you like to round up to the nearest dollar and donate the change to the museum?"

I stared at her dumbfounded. First of all, the purchase price of the bowl made a 42 cent donation feel slightly ludicrous. Second of all, I was paying with ApplePay, THERE WAS NO CHANGE. Third of all, I'd ALREADY COMPLETED THE TRANSACTION.

I said no.

Then she stared at the bowl, gaging its size and said, "you don't want any tissue paper or a box or anything do you?"

I said no again, but I did have a slight hint of WTF face going on, I'm sure.

Luckily we had a yoga mat in the back of the car, so it was no big deal to transport the bowl buck naked. But yeah. That happened.

NaBloPoMo Day 22: Visiting the Frederic Church Mansion with Matt and Helen.

2025-11-22T21:15:00.001-05:00

The view of Olana, Frederic Church's home.
The view from the walking path.

Frederic Church not only painted landscapes, he endeavored to create them.
He called this "terraforming"

Vaguely moorish or persian or some such.

Cool dragon candlestick brought back from overseas.

Yup. A view befitting a painter

Nice hat.

We decided to pop in to see the former home of the famous Hudson Valley School painter Frederic Church. He was a disciple of Thomas Cole who lived up the street. We took the tour and hiked around the grounds and bought a gigantic bowl in the gift shop. As you do.

NaBloPoMo Day 21: Speaking of walking around the neighborhood waving at everybody

2025-11-21T18:09:00.003-05:00

A mail truck.

So yeah, many work-from-home afternoons, I try to do a loop or two around the block. I have several goals besides taking in some fresh air.

One of my goals is to observe the neighbors and see who drives like a maniac. I have conducted studies to determine the most effective methods to encourage safe driving. I'm not even necessarily talking about my own health and well-being, there's little kids and dogs all over the place. So look, I regard my efforts as straight up community service. It's my gift to the neighborhood, you're welcome.

Here's my conclusion. The best way to get people to slow the fuck down is to wave at them all friendly like. That might be how the whole thing started with the new neighbors. Most normal people will wave back and honestly it's turned into a kind of nice neighborly ritual over the years.

So anyway, I was out the other day hauling ass around the 'hood because I needed to get back for a meeting. I must have waved at the mailman because why not? Much to my surprise, he pulled over. He said to me, "You're just walking around for fun?"

I said, "yep, gotta get some steps in"

The mailman replied, "More power to ya!" And he drove off.

I came home and told Tom and we don't quite know what to make of it.

NaBloPoMo Day 20 : The Flower/Flour Reading Texts out loud Problem

2025-11-20T12:23:00.002-05:00

Weighing all the things on the bread scale

Tom was texting with Matt about baking bread. We were headed up for a weekend visit, with a plan for Tom to demonstrate the bread making process. Tom said to make sure there's a scale. It is essential to weigh flour and other ingredients if you want a loaf that actually is edible. Matt says they do not have a scale, and Tom says he'll bring ours.

Tom starts reading the texts aloud to me. I hear: Matt says when I bring up the scale he's going to use it to weigh flour.

I'm like, right. To bake the bread.

Tom says, no. Because he wants to double check what they tell him at the dispensary.

Me: ???????????

Tom: Oh, flour is a slang word for weed.

Me: oh. right. The flower you don't put in bread.

Tom; ??????????

NaBloPoMo Day 19: Man Ray at the Met

2025-11-19T17:06:00.001-05:00

My Met membership expired. I could certainly have renewed online but I never renew museum memberships online. I membership-max. This means that when my memberships expire, I let 'em be expired until the next time I go to the museum. Then I renew at the membership desk. Why pay for a month or three months of zero museum visits? Might as well just start the new year of membership at the most optimal moment, ie when I need a museum membership because I am physically at the museum entrance looking to get in.

The only time this calculous changes is if you get a discount for auto-renewals and/or I'm guilted into it. A patron of the arts such as myself is susceptible to such mind games.

Anyway, I had an appointment on the upper east side the other day and wound up literally walking by the Met on my way back. So I decided to pop in to see this Man Ray exhibit I kept hearing everyone talking about. Which meant I had to renew my membership. Which I did. It was really not at all exciting.

I know nothing about Man Ray. And still kind of don't because I had very limited time and I just thought I'd walk through to get the vibe of the show, fully intending to come back with Bruce or Tom and take it in more slowly.

I guess Man Ray did a bunch with photographic techniques.

Man Ray was born in 1890 and died in 1976. He did a lot of work in the 1930s... I had always thought he was more of a 60's surreal kind of guy so call my quick tour a learning moment.

I popped out of the other side of the exhibit and was extremely happy that the new Rockefeller wing was open because this made it easy to leave the museum. For all the years they had this wing under construction, to exit the Met from that side you had to go the whole way through the medieval area and back through great hall. I mean, i guess you could have gone up to the second floor and come across and then down but still. You get my point.

NaBloPoMo Day 18: The Neighbors we never met moved out

2025-11-18T11:13:00.001-05:00

We got a lovely card in the mailbox from our neighbors
we never actually met. In my opinion.

The new neighbors moved in 7 years ago and we never, not even once, spoke with them. I'm not saying we were blameless in this whole affair, it's not like we sent them a basket of tea or some kind of welcome offering. But yeah. We never met them. But we did have many many interactions.

I walk around the neighborhood. It's my thing. I get steps in. And every single time one of them would drive by in their car, I waved. At first, they just stared at me like I was a lunatic.

So I waved more aggressively. It became kind of a game for me to try to get right in their line of sight with a gigantic aggressive wave.

After about five years of this hyper friendly waving, they started to, very tentatively wave back. A tiny finger gesture became a lackluster hand flap. I think that's where progress ended.

Fast forward to when they moved out a few weeks ago and we find this note in our mailbox:

"Hello Neighbors (they don't know our names),
We just wanted to write and say thank you for being such great neighbors over the years."

You never know what other people are thinking I guess is the bottomline.

NaBloPoMo Day 17: Photos that were texted to me today

2025-11-17T18:20:00.001-05:00

I think this is the program from a play at SoHo Playhouse
that someone in my bookclub enjoyed.

"Check out this bleeding heart radish"
Right? I'm always up to check out a radish.

Bruce is in Santiago Chile.

NaBloPoMo Day 16: Sunday Afternoon Vibe

2025-11-16T14:01:00.012-05:00

Vacuum sealed bags and my Brother PTouch

These are a few of my favorite things. I don't know how I lived before I got the label maker. And then after I got a whole bunch of those vacuum sealed bags, wow. What a powerful combo. Feeling really productive in my pursuit of maximum density living.

Carole would be proud of me. I've seen her watch someone put left overs into a tupperware container and then after they put their tupperware container in the fridge, she takes it out again and finds a more compact container with less air space. She's an unsurpassed master at spacial relations.

I can't compete at that level but yeah. I'll undeniably give you a little stink eye if you throw a few fluffy things in a rubbermaid tub and call it good.

NaBloPoMo Day 15: Pocket Text from Kerry

2025-11-15T18:39:00.002-05:00

I had a really nice lunch with Kerry and Lynnie the other day. So probably that's why I got to be the proud recipient of a pocket text from Kerry this morning.

No worries, I was right on it with my reply:

you will never beat me in a game of these kinds of photos!

Look friends, I'm masterful at accidentally taking photos. Half my camera role is shots like this. I'm unstoppable.

NaBloPoMo Day 14: Popped into the gallery down the block

2025-11-14T18:18:00.027-05:00

There was this first floor commercial/retail location down the block from us that sat empty for a hella long time. Like five years or more. At one point, someone wanted to put in a private club of some kind and host private "parties." I've never seen our block come together faster to make sure "parties" didn't happen. Nothing like an alcohol-infused late night "parties" anything venue to instill a sense of community.

So fast forward at least a year and signs appeared announcing an art gallery was moving in. Exciting!

I swear two years later, the "coming soon" signs were still on the windows.

But then, at long last, the art gallery opened.

Tom and I buzzed by on their opening night and the show and saw:

it's certainly a sculpture.

Although the inaugural exhibition in the gallery really did not careen down the middle of my lane, it still was definitely cool to have a gallery across the street.

A couple weeks ago, I noticed that the exhibition had turned over in the gallery, so I popped in after I got my hair done. You might think that I probably looked very chic galavanting about fresh from the salon, but you would be wrong. They charge extra to blow dry your hair and I'm far too cheap for that kind of nonsense. I walk out with damp pony tail.

Maybe that was the problem actually.

The latest in the gallery that opened
where the private club did not.

So I pop into the gallery in all my towel dried glory. The gallery guy eyes me up and down like they always do when you go into a gallery. Am I there to buy? Am I there to steal something? Will I put my greasy fingers on an art by accident because I'm completely uncivilized?

I get that these are important questions for a guy running the gallery to deduce.

I say, "It's great that you moved in here, I live across the street and think you are a wonderful addition to the neighborhood." RIGHT? I'm suave and lovely even if my hair is not.

The guy goes, "oh, you live across the street? Were you just walking by or did you come over here special?"

I'm like, ah. So now we get to the place where I identify as Not a Buyer. At least of these.

I say, yeah, I was just walking by but the photographs look very interesting.

(I try to save myself a little bit).

The gallery guy is no longer interested in me. At all. I say, "I noticed it took a little while to open up, were there permit issues or something?"

I say this because all New Yorkers like to bitch about permits. It's practically a hobby for some. I thought this was a great way to connect a little bit, show some neighborhood spirit.

The gallery guy goes, "oh no. It was remarkably fast."

ugh... yeah. First of all, I'm hard to gaslight when objectively I'm clear on the facts. It took years. Second of all, it's flat out weird to suggest the city is "remarkably fast" at absolutely anything. The only grace I can give the guy is if he expected it to take 7 years and it only took half that.

I say all this to say, despite the gallerist's strange comportment and either odd standards or failing memory, I'm still glad to have them over there. I'm a big fan of art and art galleries that close at 7... except for the occasional opening night that is definitely not a "party," what can I say.

NaBloPoMo Day 13: We saw a baby goat.

2025-11-13T13:07:00.012-05:00

Not just a baby goat, this goat was 4 hours old. Literally this goat had been in utero until like just after lunch.

Mom and the goat.

We were vacationing in Ocean City Maryland when this photo was taken. These people renting an airBnB down the block from us said they had to take the goat with them on vacation due to it being born while they were packing up the car to leave.

I don't fully understand this. We failed to ask sufficient questions. For example, no one asked where the Mom Goat was and why she was deemed incompetent.

Hopefully mom goat was home in the barn getting some much needed R&R, and this was not a scenario where the people down the block had just made off with a goat infant, 911 style.

I bet AirBnB rules don't specifically forbid goats, so at least as far as AirBnB is concerned I'm sure these people down the block are in the clear.