Baltimore New York Met

Laguna Beach to New York City

Carmel Big Sur, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Newport Beach

Los Gatos, Santa Cruz, Carmel by the Sea

Gorgeous San Francisco

I Love California

Adams Morgan, DC

Gotterdammerung, Mother's Day, Cloisters

Rude New Yorker

Kant and Rousseau and Guitar

Thunderstorms and Seigfried

Back in New York for the Ring

Rainy Day in Baltimore

Highline, West Village, East Village, Union Square

Walking Shoes

First on my shopping list is a good pair of walking shoes. I am walking miles and miles each day, and I can feel the solidity of the asphalt on the soles of my feet and in my calves and my thighs and my derriere and my back and my neck. I regularly underestimate the distances and convince myself each time that the walk is not worth the $2.50 subway ride. I am sure there must be a way to get reduced fares, but I have not discovered the secret method yet, and my metrocard requires reloading almost daily.

On Thursday I retried the route to the Loews movie theatre near Union Square. I had been terribly lost on Monday when I used google maps to look up the best way to 3rd street instead of 3rd avenue, arrived almost at my destination, then opened my iphone and got turned around and found myself further and further away. My effort to save the $2.50 metro fare resulted in a $10 cab ride. I am not sure how I got turned around, but managed to find my way back home easily Monday and this time it was a straight shot down Broadway to the movie theatre and back. I discovered that 27th street was full of gardening shops with gorgeous plants and wonderful smells. I need to get back there and choose some plants for the apartment. The movie was 'Cycling with Moliere', a hoot of a French movie about two French movie actors on an island in France rehearsing 'The Misanthrope' and arguing with each other. Later, Maya and I walked up to the Highline to the end and then through Chelsea back home. We chose cupcakes at Ruthy's bakery in the Chelsea Market on 9th to try in our tastetest, but the red velvet failed terribly and the vanilla buttercream was little better. We passed several cupcake establishments along 9th, and made plans to return for further purchases and tasting events.

Friday's morning task was to walk from the apartment on 29th to the Special Music School on 67th to deliver papers for Maya's application to the school. She had been originally scheduled to do her audition May 10, without a chance to get in; suddenly her audition was moved up to May 1 with a chance to make it, so I wanted to be sure her application was complete. I stopped at Grom on the way back to pay for our ice creams we had bought the day before and could not pay for with my Amex. They were surprised I actually came back to pay; I wanted to be sure we could return for delicious ice cream again! I stopped at CakeBoss for more cupcakes for our tasting project. They worked out well, got higher scores than the others from all of us; there was too much frosting and not enough cake, but altogether the tastes were better than expected. Our cupcake evaluating journey will be an ongoing event. My movie Friday was nearby, on 28th and 8th, so the walk there and back was easy.

Today Maya had an early violin lesson at Holly's home on 91st street. We walked Eric to the Bolt bus on the corner on 7th and 33rd and then took the subway from there. He is in Baltimore for the weekend getting the house ready for the renters. Maya's lesson lasted two hours. I walked to the nearby Starbucks for a leisurely New York Times reading, and found myself interacting with other guests. I agreed with the man to my right that reading the Times was so much more fun on paper rather than online; another ragged looking fellow approached me with a request that I tell another woman nearby that she had toilet paper hanging out of her pants. I did not want to but thought better of it and found her very thankful and humorous in her response. Whew. New Yorkers are friendly and funny and entertaining. 

Maya and I walked from 91st down Broadway enjoying the hustle and bustle of the Saturday shopping crowds. We stopped at Teavana to taste tea and bought the smallest amount we could (our original request cost $60!) and Sabon to get our hands washed and oiled and to buy essential skin care items. We smelled all the scents in Occitane and had gelato at Grom near the Lincoln Center. There were protesters with pink placards at the plaza in front of the theatre. Maya did not want to walk all the way home, but we slogged through the packed sidewalks to get there. Later we walked to 33rd to get the subway to her ballet studio for a pointe class and walked again the five blocks to and from the metro stop to the studio. Our evening was another walk to Times Square (too many people, I guess we are becoming New Yorkers, already a bit disdainful about the tourists). We were tourists again when we bought theatre tickets at TKTS. We walked up to 50th between 8th and 9th to see 'Peter and the Starcatchers', which delighted Maya; she loved the books and we laughed and laughed for the two hour show. We walked home again down 9th, passing dozens of restaurants and more crowds of people out for the spring evening.

My feet hurt so very much! I imagine my callouses will harden and the rest of me will adjust and soon our regular 5 and 10 mile strolls will feel easy and effortlless. And it will be so very good for us.

Tribeca Film Festival

Anonymous

Cupcakes

Diana Krall, Central Park, Rigoletto

65 Blocks

Macbeth and Terror

I like Big Baths

Back Home

Knowing my Neighbourhood

Magnolia Trees

Economics!

Coming and Going

I was eager to return to New York and settle into our apartment on Sunday. The rest of my week in Edmonton was  painful (watching my mother struggle with her memory and my father confined to his bed in isolation) and resulted in an unassailable lethargy. I could get nothing accomplished. I brought all my documents with me to complete my taxes and never opened my briefcase. I had courses to finish online and only just completed an exam ten minutes before the deadline. I did not bother to write the paper for philosophy or finish the exams (this is an online coursers course and auditing the lectures is just fine). I found myself taking care of my mother from the moment I woke up until the time she settled in front of the television to catch up on news or any program that was on. I would retreat to my bed to read a book of catch up with Downton Abbey or check the news and then sleep at least eight hours. My mother woke up after 9, so I sometimes had a couple hours in the morning to occupy myself much as I did the night before.

I left my parents alone for a few days (my sister arrives Thursday) and almost missed my flight to Minneapolis. I arrived a minute past the deadline, but was able to smile myself onto the flight and was bumped to first class so I could have cheerios and a muffin for breakfast. The best part of Edmonton was the incredibly bright sunshine that cheered me up every day. The mounds of snow shrunk from twenty feet high to only little bumps, and the roads were no longer icy when I left. When I arrived at the chaos that is LaGuardia, the sky was grey and heavy and uninviting. Eric and Maya were lost finding me at my arrival terminal, but we connected and were on the jam packed roads quite efficiently. How was it possible that so many people were driving around Easter Sunday afternoon?

The apartment was in less turmoil than when I left, and again it was bigger and smaller than I remembered. I spent the evening trying to plan and rearrange furniture to make it work for us. Maya and Eric had worked on organizing what they could, and it was homey and welcoming and wonderful. Maya entertained me with violin practice while Eric cooked Easter dinner. Maya and Eric had decorated 30 plus eggs and there was lots of lots of chocolate. Dinner was salmon with teryaki sauce and potatoes  with rosemary and asparagus with lots of butter. Chocolate of course for dessert.

I was happy to be home again, albeit for  short visit. We were on the road early Monday morning. Eric had booked movers to work with him on the garage and the storage unit. Maya and I bought new ballet pointe shoes for her audition in New York next week. The saleslady recognized me and was relieved that this time I was with my daughter and not asking the impossible of her,  as when I bought ballet shoes for friends in Ecuador without quite knowing sizes or styles. Maya worked on her schoolwork the rest of the day while I started in my office. Maya and Eric returned to New York with the truck today and I stayed to see patients, plan a coup d'etat for my board meeting and finish my taxes. Again, I would much rather be nesting in our new apartment in New York, but  that will have to wait another week. Moving to New York is not happening fast enough!

Crash and Burn

My arrival in Edmonton, wounded and battered from my encounter with a vehicle, after a much delayed flight and long waits in airports, was quiet and peaceful and unremarkable. My mother waited for my arrival at 1 AM and we quickly went to sleep (I watched the last few episodes of Downton Abbey and fell asleep at 5 AM east coast time). My mother sleeps late, so I was up before she was, we had breakfast and coffee and visited my father at the hospital. He had been moved to the Geriatric Unit, where he was to be rehabbed for several weeks. He was relieved to have quiet and comfortable roommates so he was able to sleep and relax and adjust. He looked great, was in good spirits and had made remarkable progress since his admission.

I decided that my purpose was to care for my mother, who seemed lost and confused much of the time. I wanted her to see her doctor for an evaluation for the assisted living home and for her driver's license. With my broken wrist, I found an excuse to see her doctor and to get her an appointment to have her rash looked at. I was proud to have things move forward. Today we visited with OT and PT and both my parents lied convincingly about his pre fracture lifestyle. He has been unsteady on his feet for years, and does not use his walker in the home and has fallen many times before, but with clear eyed innocence told the therapists that he was walking without difficulty and managing well prior to his fall. When I tried to correct him, my mother interjected with a similar story. Her aim is to get him home as soon as possible, and I am not sure what his game is. I tried to interject with some veracity, but was drowned out and did not want to be disrespectful.

Later, we learned that my father is 'colonized' with MRSA and will be in isolation for now. I imagine he contracted it from his neighbour on the medicine floor, who had an open wound and required his visitors to gown and glove. It looks as if the whole unit is on lockdown, with no more dining hall eating and restriction of movement for my father. It is all so depressing, especially since only yesterday his doctor was effusively delighted with his prognosis. My father may well die of this super resistant staph infection, and my mother and I have been intimately exposed.

I brought my mother home, washed all clothes and sheets and towels we had used in the prior two days, returned to give my father some encouragement and reassurance, and came home to the roof leaking in two places and the realization that I never did get an answer about my wrist, which I believe is broken or perhaps just bruised but intolerably painful and swollen and blue. I cannot afford medical care here and hope that does not mean I am causing more damage without having appropriate care.

My visit started so positively and with much hope, and has descended rapidly to despair and fear. Tomorrow may bring more drama. I am taking my mother to her doctor for a list of concerns, including her rash, now MRSA, a paper to be signed for assisted living which she will refuse to comply with, and her driving evaluation which I hope she does not pass. It is all so much more complicated than I feared and more and more serious.

This is good!

It was too late upon our arrival to do more than blow up the queen size bed which just fit into Maya's room filled with boxes. The cats wandered around their new domain, marking each corner and cubby. The kind size bed covers almost the entire floor of my bedroom, but it feels luxurious and wonderful to close the shutters and hear just a little of the city noises outside. People are wandering around all night a few feet away from me, but it was not the city revelers that kept me awake; the cats are prowling all night and investigating constantly, and I will have to adjust to them. There is nowhere to hide in the apartment.

We all slept in, and the girls made pancakes for breakfast. The apartment has a complete kitchen, which was one of the attractions, but everything is in miniature; the fridge, the dishwasher, the washer/dryer (another plus) and the stove are all three quarter size, but entirely functional. The children were thrilled to sit on bar stools at the breakfast counter. Eric and I started unpacking boxes while Maya practiced violin with her 'mute' to muffle the sound. We are not sure our neighbours above and below want to hear three hours of violin a day at all hours.

Our adventure began in full sunshine (but cold) midday. There was a plaque near the front of the house informing us that several houses on the block were part of the 'Underground Railroad' and are historical landmarks. We walked up our street to 8th avenue, and ran into a protest of postal workers and locals and lots of police. The movement was for maintaining Saturday postal delivery. We passed a very imposing neoclassical post office on the left and in no time were in front of Pennsylvania Station. How convenient for us! I had read that Madison Square Gardens/Penn station was considered one of the uglier buildings in the city and was going to be torn down and destroyed. We headed toward 7th avenue and ran into Macy's, where we stood in line for a view of their garden show, a pavilion on Broadway full of exotic and tropical flowers with an Indian theme. It was gorgeous and lush and Eric and I liked that it did not cost a penny. Eric has charged me with finding free activities in New York, so that is one of my projects.

We had a bite at 'Pret a Manger', which I remembered eating at in London with Tara years ago; we found the food tasty and better than most English food and entirely affordable. Our next stop was 'Sabon', a soap store where Maya, Belina, Marius and I all had our hands washed, scrubbed, exfoliated and hydrated with luscious smelling lotions and cremes. ToysRUs was next, we stopped for a while at TKTS to see if there was a musical we HAD to see, but went on to the MnM store for a 'mood analysis. Maya was orange and quirky, I was creme and creative and Marius was pink and calm. At Rockefeller center, we admired the chocolates at 'Maison de Chocolat' and the skaters at the ice rink. The Lego store had the same sculptures it had last year. At St Patrick's cathedral almost every corner was under construction, but we found a place to sit and contemplate. We stopped in at the Lindt store for samples, and watched a street show with four young black men 'doing something positive' by dancing and gyrating acrobatically for pennies.

The children were tired and it was getting cold, so we walked along the edge of Central Park and admired the horses and their decorations. Our destination was 'Grom's' on Broadway for the best gelato in town. We scrambled down Broadway and then Eighth to our almost too warm apartment, where the cats had escaped from their exile in the bathroom. There are  heated pipes too hot to touch in the bedroom and the living room, which heat the space along with the radiators, all of which are turned off.  I have opened the windows in the bedroom and the open living space to encourage fresh air, but am not sure open windows are wise.

I was entranced by our first day in our new home. I slept a little better the second night, but actually liked hearing the street noise outside my window. It was Monday and Eric took the Path train to NJIT, while Maya worked on schoolwork and Belina made English scones. I found a Dean and Deluca up Eighth Avenue and decided to look for clotted cream. It was lightly drizzling when I left the house, and the drizzle turned to snow.I dropped off Maya's schoolwork at the magnificent post office up the street and enjoyed some espresso before briskly walking amongst the crowds to my destination 20 streets away. I was disappointed that Dean and Deluca was a coffee shop and not a store and did not have clotted cream, so I headed back on the wet streets.

Eric had warned Maya and I - more than once -  to watch carefully when crossing the street. I ran across the intersection at 34th or 35th street, and a car turned left behind me and touched me slightly. I slipped as if on a banana peel and found myself upended on my back, feet in the air like an overturned turtle. It all happened so quickly, that I did not see that the car sped away. I thought I could not moved, and accepted the aid of passersby, who pulled me to my feet and asked if I was ok. I could walk, so I gingerly walked on, stunned by the experience. I was relieved that I was not paralyzed or run over, that I was alive. It took some time to pull myself together before I walked in the house where the children were playing quietly. I called Eric to pick up a splint for my swollen wrist and looked up urgent care facilities. By the time Eric arrived, it did not appear that I had enough time to wait for medical care, since I had a flight to Edmonton that evening and my Amtrak train was at 4.

Eric went out with the children to frolic in the rain, and I pulled myself together, painfully and left the apartment. I met a visitor to a neighbour upstairs who was friendly and sweet. It was agonizing to walk the few blocks to Penn station, but I got to Newark intact and onto my delayed flight (snow was on and off) and off to Edmonton. Being in first class the first leg helped, but in Minneapolis, I asked for a cart and since I did not look as needy as the elderly man I was with, I was dropped off nowhere near my gate and had to hobble for a time before I hailed another cart. I arrived at my parent's house after 1 in the morning, and my mother greeted me with irritation after waiting longer than expected for my arrival.

After spending the day taking care of my mother and visiting my father at the hospital, talking to doctors and nurses and physical therapists, and learning that my father is doing better than expected and experiencing my mother as appreciative and needy and feeling useful and important, along with taking lots and lots of Ibuprofen, I am relieved that I did not delay my flight and that I am here to do what I do well; which is to take care of people.

I wanted an Xray of my wrist, but the ER people told me it would be too expensive. I visited my parents' family doctor, who sent me for an Xray at the hospital. When asked for $675 up front, I chose to go to a nearby Radiography enterprise and paid $45 for an Xray to be read by tomorrow. I will figure out what to do when I get the results, and meanwhile enjoy the effects of NSAIDS. I will certainly watch very carefully when crossing the streets in my New York City home.

Arrival

Finally. We chose a lovely and tiny apartment and signed the lease March 15, Eric moved the furniture (about a seventh of the total number of pieces we have in our three storage units) last weekend, and Maya and I arrived late this evening to piles of boxes and packing materials covering almost every inch of what seemed to be a lovely apartment when we saw it a few weeks ago.

I had looked for apartments in January when in Baltimore for a working week in January. I found lovely places but did not really know what I wanted, and in retrospect saw a duplex in the East Village which was perfect for us, but did not realize it until much later. Maya, Eric and I looked again for a weekend in late February and saw this lovely light and airy place in Chelsea,  after a couple more days of searching, Maya and I decided this was the place, and without looking again, insisted that we sign the lease. To see it for the first time since our initial exposure was surprising; it was both smaller and bigger than I remembered, but mostly it is awfully small, and we will have to learn to live with less of everything.

Belina and Marius have joined us for our adventure. It is their school break and their parents, Daphne and Julien, will join them Monday. Eric bought a blowup queen size bed which covers the entire floor in Maya's bedroom, but all three children are able to sleep there. Our kingsize monstrosity fits in the other bedroom, which is not usual for New York apartments. It covers almost every inch of the floor, with just enough space to walk around the sides of the bed.

We have delivered our cats to the apartment. They have been left alone in our big house in Baltimore for six weeks, with an automatic feeder and litter box, and have become feral again. There is no room for them here, but we will all adjust.

This is our great Manhattan adventure.