the pieces of my life

Nothing controversial about this stop! A trip to Crumbs, for a cupcake
extraordinaire. She ordered the Reeses cupcake. Too bad she didn't
order a pink cupcake because our next stop is…

When searching for this online, I discovered that little girl mani/
pedis are a very controversial topic. I don't wish to debate it. The
girl loved it. And we now have matching nails.

The first stop on our whirlwind day is to the Plaza, Plaza, Plaza to
see, of course, if Eloise was home. We were rawther disappointed to
learn she was running errands with Nanny, but we did get to see her
picture and she was kind enough to leave Pie a postcard.

Note to self: When telling a four-year-old that you’re going to an art show, be sure to emphasize the art part and perhaps use the word “exhibit” instead of “show.” Because, otherwise, after entering an extremely crowded museum (luckily for free through the passes of my mother), you will have a sad child looking for “the people doing a show.”

Today was another trip down memory lane. I recently got back in touch with a former roommate, a woman I met at my first post-college job at Saatchi and Saatchi. We lived together in a one-bedroom apartment in Alphabet City, back when Alphabet City was a scarier part of town, about a year after the riots in Tompkins Square Park. Our apartment was one block north and one block east of the park. I know I’ve written about it before. It was the fifth floor of a walk-up, where the front door didn’t lock, and the light on the third floor landing was out so you’d have to step over the homeless guys sleeping there. She slept in the living room and I slept in the bedroom because, well, I whine loudly and she’s a nicer person than I am. The only closet, though, was in the bedroom so she’d tiptoe in to get her shoes, which was fine except when my sort-of boyfriend was there and when the psycho cat was having flashbacks (we had a cat passed on to us named Motorhead. A female cat named Motorhead. This cat had done more drugs than Flower, myself, the sort of boyfriend, and the rest of the apartment building including the guy sleeping on the third-floor landing put together. This cat was not normal but she did do a thorough job on the mice, of which there were a few). This was the apartment that taught me it is easier to buy more underwear than to cart my clothes down five flights and four blocks away to be cleaned. Hence why Adam does laundry today (no one–I mean no one–can outlast my supply of underwear, so I never, ever need to do laundry). I could continue with this little history for a long, long time, so let’s move on to today.

My roommate, Flower (the name I actually call her, but not her real name), found me online and I got to meet her for breakfast this morning at City Bakery. Pie came with us, got a muffin, met Flower (“Her name is really Flower? I can call her ‘Flower’?”), and then got picked up by my father so Flower and I could catch up. I haven’t seen her since I moved out of New York in 1994. So, you know, it had been a while. It was amazing seeing her–it brought back memories I had long, long forgotten (or repressed?), including a week-long stay in the hospital. How do you forget things like that? I had.

See? The magic of the Internet. I have Flower back! We had a nosh, we did a little shopping (I’m almost good on all my Hanukkah shopping), roaming the Union Square area (more memories–my NYU dorm was on Union Square).

After I said good-bye to Flower, I retrieved Pie and my mother, and we headed to the “art show” that had no “show.” The afternoon was saved, though, because the Guggenheim has a ramp. Oh! What a ramp! She climbed up and up and up! Occasionally we tried to point out the art work (“What do you see here? Aren’t these interesting colors?”) and she’d look for a second and then head back to the ramp. She had some interest in the Anish Kapoor piece and the gold of the beads. But, worryingly, the thing that most interested her was the Kitty Kraus, a room that basically had melted ink all over the floor. And us with those beautiful new floors at home. Oh well.

She became interested in the Kadinsky “bubble” painting after we suggested that when she got back to the apartment she could make her own Kadinsky-inspired art work.

We were hoping to meet the Tweedle Twirp for a late lunch, but Pie pooped, so we headed back to the apartment. Tweedles and I went out for some Japanese food and a trip to the Strand, and Pie stayed back at the apartment to create an art museum with my mom. I listened to Tweedles’s life of academia and woes about bedbugs (yes, she had bedbugs! And did you know a bedbug registry exists? Awesome! She had to heat everything in her apartment to above 120 degrees using some special machine and everything the owned was put in ziplock bags. She also had to buy new furniture. Fun times!), but apparently it’s too soon to joke about the bedbugs, so no snide comments here. We came back to a wonderful art museum in the apartment–Pie spent quite a while making wonderful drawings.

Tomorrow is the day of Pie surprises. I’ll try to post as we do them so you can be surprised along with her. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow and hope the girl can keep her stamina up. We start the day with a breakfast at the gallery that’s having her show, which Pie knows about, and then we continue with the ultimate girl day.

The only thing marring this trip so far is I’ve developed a rather bad cold. I keep checking in with myself (“No fever. Good. Oh, that cough is in my chest and phlegmy. Check. Stuffy nose. Yep.”) just to make sure it’s really a cold and not H1N1. One of my favorite things to do in NYC is of course running. I love going down the West Side, in Henry Hudson park, around the tip of Manhattan. But with this cold, that’s not happening. Luckily race season is over and I’m not training for anything, so I can allow myself to be a slug for a few days.

So for now, I’m off to take my Nyquil. Good night, everyone! Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

My daughter is definitely a City Mouse. And I am not nearly as organized as I’d like to be. My plans to leave home for the Big City at 6 a.m. kinda petered out as we finally left at 7. And by 7, I mean 7:38. But we made great time right up to the point where we weren’t making great time, and Pie only asked seven times in the first hour, “When are we going to be in New York?”

The drive was painless right up to Westchester, when the powers that be decided to make the three-lane highway and one-lane highway, extending out trip by a full hour. But we made it to my parents’ apartment just in time for lunch and then we headed out for our adventures.

Our first stop was my old office. Well, not really my old office, but yes really my old office. Once upon a time, in a decade far far away, I worked for the book publishing company Putnam Berkley, which has since become Penguin Putnam. Our offices were in the Murray Hill area. The offices have since moved to a swank building in SoHo. So I never worked there. Except that I have because my very first short-lived job out of college was working in advertising. In the very same swank building.

Visiting the office really made me miss those days of having a place to go and work to do. The woman I visited is now the head of the whole department, and she was the also the woman who replaced me when I left the job in 1994. A lifetime ago. It’s hard not to think what ifs. What if I had stayed in New York. What if I had stayed in publishing. What if, what if, what if. But really, I remember finding my job rather dull, and I was near the end when I applied for grad school. New York was grating on my nerves–I spent way too much time working (I had to do freelance after work to make enough money to pay my rent) and not enough time doing the things that one moves to New York to do. So I left.

But it’s still fun visiting them, hearing what everyone is up to. But after I got my grown-up time in, it was on to kid stuff. We hooked up with the Nana and headed to Milk and Cookies for, surprise! Milk and cookies. Yummy, decadent cookies. And then off to Porto Rico for superdark coffee. (Note to anyone else whose husband says, “Buy me superdark coffee.” That’s not actually a coffee name. Just a description. And you’ll look like an idiot if you just walk up and say, “A pound of the Superdark, please.” Just sayin’.) And finally to that shopping mecca, the destination that one litle girl has been pining for lo these years: LittleMissMatched. That girl of mine is obsessed with socks and MissMatched socks at that. I think we pretty much bought the store out. We walked a bit. Pie is a great people watcher and she sat happily for a bit at the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. She wanted to go see if Eloise was home, but she started to fade so we headed back to my parents apartment (“Yea!! Subway, subway, subway!” [sung to the tune of “The Bundle Dance”).

Next few days are full. I’ve already called my boy twice–I miss him like crazy, but know he’s going to have a good guys weekend, which apparently includes eating copious amounts of steak. And we’re going to have a great girls weekend, which includes… Well, I can’t tell you. Because when I told Pie on Wednesday, “I made some fabulous plans for us,” she squealed, clapped, and said, “Don’t tell me! I want to be surprised!”

So we’ll have surprises all around!

Tomorrow Doodles and Adam are going to a Red Sox game, so Pie and I are having a Mommy-Daughter day (Pie was given the option of a Red Sox game or lunch with me, and she chose lunch with me). In the morning, the two of us are going together to do some volunteer work. But after, we can do whatever we like.

Me: I’ve been thinking about our day tomorrow. I have two choices that I think you might like: We could have lunch in Harvard Square and then watch the Dragon Boat Races on the Charles or we could go to the art museum. We could have lunch in the cafe there.
Pie: Dragon boats like on Kai-Lan?
Me: Um, not sure. Maybe.
Pie: I want to go to the art museum!
Me: That sounds great! We’ll do that.
Pie [in a confused tone]: So, are we going to New York tomorrow?
Me: No. We won’t go to New York till school gets out for the year.
Pie: But you said we could go to the art museum tomorrow!

It takes me a minute, but then I get it.

Me: No, Pie. Did you know that there are actually art museums in Boston?
Pie: There are?!?

Oops. Somehow, it’s always seemed easier to hop in the car for a 3 1/2 hour drive to NYC to go to the Met than it’s been to hop a T into town. Do you think maybe it’s time for me to start exploring my own city with the kids? At the rate we’re going, they’re going to think that Boston is a suburb of New York. Well, a suburb with a superior baseball team. At least, according to their father.

Last weekend, we headed down for NYC for Saturday night to celebrate my parents’ 45th wedding anniversary and my dad’s 69th birthday. Our trips to New York are so brief these days that I don’t get to see old friends or do much of anything that doesn’t revolve around the kids. I’m hoping this summer to take the kids for a good week or so and then I’ll get to call people and get out a bit more.

This time, though, I kept thinking I’d seen people I knew. For example, on the subway with Pie on the way to hang out with Tweeds in Soho, I could have sworn I saw my former boss from my publishing days. She was sitting on the platform, with her trademark gray streaked hair. I was seconds away from saying something to her when it occurred to me that she looked exactly as she looked… eighteen years ago. If I saw her today, there’s no way her gray streaked hair would still be streaked. At this point, it would be entirely gray or solidly not (if she colored it). The woman was in her mid 30s. These days, my former boss would be in her early 50s. I thought I saw a guy I dated briefly in college and two friends from film school. But the people I was seeing were the age they were back then.

I think the issue is, I don’t picture myself as 40. I feel like I’m eternally about 26 or 28 (never 27. Don’t know why, but 27 never enters my thoughts). Forty just doesn’t fit right on me. It’s kind of like the house remodel–I told Adam, “The new house feels like the kind of house a grown-up would live in. I’m not old enough for a grown-up house.”

Growing up, my parents would always say, “Our house, our rules.” When I was 19, I lived in a loft-style apartment in New York near Gramercy Park. My mom came to stay with me. At about 2 a.m., a friend of mine called. My mom was on the couch below and I saw her jump up when the phone rang, with a look on her face like someone was about to get in trouble (no phone calls after 10 p.m. had been the rule). And then suddenly her expression changed as she realized she didn’t have a say any more, and I said, “My house, my rules! Calls are welcome at any hour!” I felt like such a grown-up! I definitely felt more grown-up then than I do now. (For the record, nowadays calls are almost never welcome, at any hour, and certainly never after oh, let’s say, 7 p.m.)

But grown-up I am. Pie loves to check on my hair roots. “Mommy, pull back your hair! I want to see the white!”

I pulled back my hair, but I had had it colored two weeks ago (yes, I have my hair colored). Pie said, “It’s not white!” Then she paused and said, “But it will be!”

Yes. Yes, it will.

The apartment no longer smells of bologna, because the stink of burnt sugar has overridden it. And I don’t mean the yummy smell of caramelized sugar; I mean the stench of sugar that smoked up and snuck into every nook and cranny. That smell of burnt sugar. Note to self: don’t leave check Facebook while toffee syrup is cooking.

To continue with New York trip #1: A quick note about Thanksgiving: Everything, and I mean everything, was open, it seemed. Whole Foods? Open. Gristede’s? Open. The bagel store? Open. The liquor store? Open. To me, half the fun of Thanksgiving is realizing you’ve forgotten some important ingredient and having to make some sort of odd substitution in a panic-stricken way. It loses some of the magic when you can pop down to the local market and pick up that bag of cranberries or the bottle of bourbon (neither of which I forgot–my bourbon-spiked sweet potatoes, by the way, were fabulous, if I do say so myself).

On both Friday and Saturday night, Adam and I were able to escape sans kids. One lovely dinner at AOC. Another lovely dinner at Le Zie. A movie. A real movie. With no cartoon characters or people singing in high-pitched voices (Slumdog Millionaire, which was amazing!).

Saturday was even better because while Adam and my father took Doodles to the Museum of Natural History and my mom to Pie to the Central Park Zoo, I had sushi and beer with the Tweedle Twirp. Happiness all around! Of course, Pie being Pie, my mother reported that they took the subway up to the zoo. The zoo is three blocks from the subway stop. But upon exiting the subway, Pie announced, “I can’t walk. I’m too tired.”

Now, any self-respecting parent–as my mother was at one time–knows that the proper response to this is, “Well, if you’re that tired, we’ll turn around and go back to the apartment.” It is not, as my mother said, “Taxi!” Yes, my diva daughter got her Nana to spring for a taxi to go the entire three blocks from the subway to the zoo. And I wonder why she has such princess tendencies.

The trip was a success and the ride back was almost tolerable, except for Pie shouting for the last hour, “I want to get out of my seat RIGHT NOW!” and Adam’s shortcut that took us an extra hour. The highlight was Pie taking her bag of carrots and her water bottle and chucking them across the car. That girl might have a future as a ball player… as long as it doesn’t mess up her nails, of course (nails painted by Nana, colors chosen by Pie: black on the left foot, red on the right).

The following weekend I returned to New York with three girlfriends, Beetle; Jasmine’s mother who needs a name of her own, but of course, like all princesses, Jasmine doesn’t have a living mother (quick–name a Disney princess with a mother!); and a third friend who we met up there, A.

As enjoyable as the first trip was, this was a whole new experience. We weren’t sure which subway to take. Doesn’t matter! Just hop on! No one needs a snack or a bathroom or is whining, “When will we get there?” We’ll figure it out as we go. At every meal–every meal!!!–no one insisted on eating off my plate. No one used an outdoor voice in the restaurant. No one said, “I’m tiiiired. Can we go home yet? How much longer?”

We had sushi at 11 p.m. Music and beer at National Underground. An incredible nine-mile run with Beetle around the tip of Manhattan (we saw Chelsea Piers, Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty, Battery Park, South Street Seaport–really nice). Breakfast at noon at Markt. A bit of shopping. Some cookies. An amazing Broadway show. And a midnight dinner at Le Zie again for me. Breakfast on Sunday at City Bakery, and back and back again, lickety split. The ride back was fast, despite bad weather. Relaxation. Grown-up time. Fun. And then… home.

And now? Bye bye relaxation. Bye bye grown-up time. Bye bye fun. Now it’s back to holiday shopping, baking, gift wrapping, child wrangling, house remodeling, tiny apartments, smelly bedrooms, bathrooms in need of cleaning, laundry machines that are always in use by the neighbors, yadda yadda yadda.

I’m going to make (read: reheat Whole Foods’) dinner. I wish you all a happy yadda yadda yadda.