Two Weeks From Today….

 ….we will be flying back to Canada already. I am trying not to think about it but in the back of my mind it is quietly lurking like the doom of an inevitable march to the gallows…..isn’t that just a horrible way to view a post vacation home coming?? Good grief! 

I’ll Have A Plate Of Salt With A Side Of Burger 🍔 and Fries 🍟 Please!

 Around dinner time our son texted that he had completed his day of working from home due to his cold and was crawling directly into bed in order to conserve his flagging energy for moving his studio tomorrow since he has no choice but to have everything out of his old studio by noon. Thank the dear Lord my husband will be there to help him! Now I am praying 🙏🏻that my husband 👴🏻 will not catch our son’s cold! 🤧

We both felt kind of mogey this afternoon, (interpret mogey [hard G] in light of whatever word you use when you are feeling a tad tired, 🥱 somewhat unmotivated, and bordering on crabby 😠 because you are tired of sitting around reading but don’t have any idea what else you want to do), but eventually we decided to take a wander a few blocks east of our place to walk for a bit on the path beside the East River and try to locate the ferry terminal in case we want to take a short cruise up and down one of these fine days. It was lovely looking out across the river into Brooklyn and watching the NYC ferry delivering its rush hour passengers to various stopping places. If we want to sometime we could take the 8 minute ferry ride to Stuyvesant Cove terminal a few blocks east of our son’s apartment complex. We will try to accomplish that apart from the rush hour crowds. 

We were ravenous by this time so we stopped at a river side restaurant called Hole In The Wall. Contrary to the image that name conjures up for me, the interior was light and bright with a high ceiling that absorbs the music 🎶 playing over the sound system. There was a good mix of ages and styles among the customers and I FINALLY had a chance to see the elegant new fashions worn by the young up and coming professional crowd. They are what I think of when I think of New York fashion. Thus far most of the people we have seen don’t dress that much differently than ourselves to go out shopping 🛒 or dog walking or taking the kids to the park during the day…you know, not poorly dressed, but kind of schleppy. It was fun watching the older 20 somethings in their fancier dresses and heels, suits and ties, perfect makeup and hair. They remind me of myself and my colleagues from a few centuries ago when I had a career and money enough to look good all the time. I hope all these young people are enjoying and appreciating their good fortune. 

The menu at the restaurant consisted of a couple of pastas, two salads, four burger choices, a handful of appetizers and about six pages of drink choices, haha. My simple smash burger had more flavour in the beef than any burger I have had here to date and that is because it was also the saltiest burger I have had to date! Hahaha There were four rounds of sweet pickles on the burger…more salt. There were slightly sautéed and extra salty onion slices on the burger. The fries were perfectly cooked and completely covered in sea salt. Salt abounded in both our meals. Salt, salt, salt! The place is an Ode To Salt! Oh yes, my husband’s burger had two strips of SALTY bacon! (and the cook had heated them to crispy blackness in a microwave no less! hahaha 😂) 

Salt 🧂 🧂 🧂 Salt! And again I say SALT! 🧂 

We are currently back in our suite after a beautiful long walk home past the gorgeous gold domed St. Vartan Armenian Apostolic Cathedral and its beautiful gardens across the street from the building, pickle ball courts and a soccer field…trees! 🌳 Flowers! 💐 It was a lovely walk👩‍🦯 home. 

It was really fun to walk along the river path and see the ferries ⛴️ operating. A big tugboat passed by at one point pushing a huge rusting old scow. We have been only vaguely conscious of our proximity to the river until this afternoon. Must remedy that in the coming days! 

I apologize for these ever changing font sizes. Trying to correct them after the fact is too complicated and sometimes it doesn’t even happen until I press Publish…so please bear with me, thank you.  If it is bothering you go make yourself a margarita and SALT the rim! Hahaha….

Tip Your Cleaners Well!

I learned a long time ago that it is almost always a good idea to tip hotel cleaning staff every time the room is cleaned. That way each cleaner receives money for the work they actually personally performed, depending of course on that particular establishment’s tipping policy. I leave generous tips and it is generally worth that few extra dollars. This morning we were able to meet the cleaner, explain that we can’t have carpet and room deodorizers in our suite, which she graciously complied with, she spent well over an hour in our suite and did an incredibly thorough job: fresh spotlessness everywhere, and fresh boxes of Kleenex and toilet paper rolls even though we had not anywhere nearly used up the previous paper products. Stains on the elderly kitchen counters we assumed were going to be there for all eternity, or until this old building finally collapses whichever comes first, are miraculously gone. The suite is even cleaner than when we moved in! (And it was quite clean then too.) To be in here without the overpowering scent of deodorizer is wonderful. The slight remains of my allergy based asthma should settle down nicely now. 

For breakfast this morning we walked a few blocks just off the corner of 2nd Ave. between E38th and E37th streets to Townhouse Diner for a reasonably priced diner breakfast similar to what we can get at home. No smashed avocado toast here. Yay! (I actually love avocado toast in all its variations but some days I want a taste of home.) My husband had good old fashioned bacon and eggs with beautifully browned hash browns and toast while I ordered eggs Benedict with Canadian back bacon and the same delicious, almost mashed texture hash browns. It would have been “gilding the lily” to add ketchup or even pepper. We brought home my leftover hash browns for my husband to have with his lunch. 

The diner is advertised as being a 60’s style diner and perhaps that description applies to the uniforms of the cooks and servers, but the decor is right out of the early ‘90’s: blonde oak walls and table edgings with hunter green and rose booth upholstery and Formica table tops. Our older server is a charming Latino woman who calls everyone “dear” and “sweetheart” as a matter of course. Not even the most woke of women could reasonably be offended by these words. They are part of this woman’s communication style. Being served by her was like being enveloped in a warm hug. We were told we could sit anywhere so we automatically chose a tiny booth for two, but the server moved  us over to a larger booth because, “That man of your has too long of legs for that little booth honey, but I appreciate people like you for wanting to leave the bigger tables free!”. 

The great service, comprehensive breakfast menu and thorough cleanliness of the place will easily lure us back at least a couple of times during our final two weeks here.

Apparently our home city had a huge, underpass flooding deluge of rain yesterday and that is being followed by 90km winds all day today. Warnings of possible power outages abound online so all we can do is pray that our basement is not flooded and that no power outages occur as both could create problems in our absence, not that our property management company will be able yo do much unless there are at least several inches of water in the basement, but for the sake of our friend who will be checking the place this week and doesn’t need to have to deal with such issues, we can only pray we were and will continue to be spared. Between the rain storm and the winds I am guessing any of our ripe porch tomatoes are all over the ground. Hopefully the kids in the complex will find them undamaged and eat them up. The indigenous and African kids seem to love them.

Our wonderful Syrian neighbours are moving out today, so we have been praying they will be happy in their much larger quarters in government housing. Their new baby will be born in early October, so another room is a great need fulfilled. We have been praying for weeks for good, quiet new neighbours….again….oh Lord we are trusting in your help with this, amen! The worst disasters for new neighbours have in the past always occurred while we have been away on holidays, but please oh please let that not be the case this time! Thank you Lord and praying friends. Having to think about home seems like a nasty imposition on our holiday time! 

This afternoon I think we will stay in our newly cleaned suite so that I can make headway on finishing The Art Thief at last and my husband can begin working on his presentation on the Book of Jonah for an early October adult class at church. 

A Lovely Episcopal Service Yesterday!

We are waiting for the cleaning staff to arrive this morning so we can request they not use the carpet deodorizer that has been making me so asthmatic since we arrived. Then we will go out for a late breakfast at a diner a few blocks away.  

Our son was supposed to meet us for dinner last evening but is afraid he may be coming down with a cold, so we have rescheduled for this evening in hopes he will be feeling better. He is scheduled to move into his new art studio tomorrow and my husband will assist, so I will have a day to toddle off on my own. Our son gave me several dozen quarters this weekend so I will try to do laundry in the morning before taking myself out for a fabulous lunch of some kind. 

Yesterday morning we attended a lovely service at the Church of the Incarnation, only a few blocks away. One of the founding families was the Morgans so it is well appointed, neo-Gothic in style and oh so welcoming. The highlights were:

-the enthusiastic greeting we received from the very talented organist….so well trained and experienced in classical music! 

-the beautiful baritone voice of the tattoo’d, man-bunned soloist who performed a piece from Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Ave Maria, and he sang Go Down Moses the way it is meant to be sung…richly, deeply emotional….  Then after the service, since the church printed up a short memorial to Dolly Parton, he went to the piano and sang 9 To 5, which got the congregation clapping and bopping along before walking out if the church with big smiles on everyones’ faces.

-the rector, who was the cheeriest woman ever and who gave a marvellous sermon on Moses and the burning bush, how it transformed Moses and how our own personal encounters with Christ should transform us. It was inspiring!

-returning to the Book Of Common Prayer Eucharist service. There is a depth to the older English used in it that, I’m sorry but, the Book Of Alternative Services lacks. It was fun trying to remember the old wording of the responses and Creeds without looking at the prayer book, haha.

Assuming we are available next Sunday morning and the following Sunday I think we will return for the services. It was a treat to find such a vibrant church so close to “home”. If you are interested in what the church looks like check out their website. We watched parts of the service again last night and it was odd seeing the backs of our heads as we went forward for the Eucharist. Hahaha….don’t you just hate seeing yourself on video? I do!

A Second Career As A Cabbie?

 I have been pondering our driving trip to the upstate cabin, but focusing on the last part of the drive home: from Yonkers, north of the Bronx,  through the city to our suite in midtown Manhattan at sunset. As fascinated as I was by some of the buildings we passed, I was even more fascinated by my son’s driving skills in the heavy traffic. Although he doesn’t have to drive very often these days he has developed the aggression needed to keep moving through the many traffic jams and merge lanes. This entire trip I feel like there has been time to get to know our son all over again. The country boy is all NYC now and it suits him well. 

We have enjoyed visiting the various museums and libraries where he has been responsible for lighting feature exhibitions and marvelling at what is involved in highlighting each work of art in each display. The volume of required electricians and lift equipment to get to the high ceilings for the purpose of installing myriad lights is staggering. Every light, from large spotlights to the teensiest of pot lights must be angled “just so” to keep shadows from blocking each and every piece. Things I have never thought about before and taken for granted at museums and galleries….who knew? 

I have finally had the opportunity to learn more of the history of our daughter-in-law’s family history. Before, during and after the Second World War the entire family had been driven out of half the countries of Europe….Russia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary….and fled to Israel, Kazakhstan, Canada….incredibly sad, terrifying, ultimately stories of overcoming and surviving incredible odds. It is a privilege to know more of their history and suffering. 

This trip has been a learning experience for me, an amazing one thus far and since we are here for two more weeks there is a lot of learning left to do.

So Why Is It…..

 …..I have only walked to church at home a couple of times this past spring and summer, a distance of 2.2km and it has seemed like too far to manage, but here I can easily walk to the kids’ apartment, a distance of 3.2km? If I rest at their place for an hour I can walk back again to the apt. Yes, it is tiring because I am so out of shape, but mentally it feels completely doable whereas at home the mere consideration of walking to church or downtown like I did pre-surgery seems too much to bear both mentally and physically. Was I so depressed at home that I was hindered from a proper level of activity? I am going to have to keep up this momentum after I get home! Please Lord, help me find the inspiration needed to start walking once again on those same, boring streets without copping out via some kind of flimsy excuse! Amen! 

Full And Happy Days Here In Midtown!

Yesterday was a nearly perfect day. The previous day’s rain ended so the temperature was comfortably warm and the skies only slightly cloudy. We slept in once again, then in the late morning wended our way over to the Morgan Library and Art Collection, originally founded by J.P. Morgan, who our son refers to as a “robber baron”. After seeing some of the artifacts in the collection I am guessing there may be some truth to the description. Besides thousands of antique books, the art collection is amazing: the personal seals of many Egyptian and middle eastern VIPs dating back into the early hundreds BC., as well as the most fascinating collection of ancient gold and silver brooches and standing hat brooches I have ever seen. Among other bits and pieces is a hand drawn, signed, pencil score by composer Gian Carlo Menotti.  We spent far longer there than planned. It was fascinating. 

On the way back we stopped for lunch at 2nd Avenue Deli where I ate a fantastically tasty hot brisket sandwich. It was, in typical deli fashion, stuffed with layers of brisket about 5cm thick. I confess that, other than a bit of bread crust, I ate the whole thing! The side of slaw and the two styles of dill pickles mostly went into a takeout box and my husband finished those up for breakfast this morning. 

Before we came home we went to Trader Joe’s for a carton of carbonated water and a couple of other items. The 5 or 6 block walk there and then back again carrying a few bags of groceries does not seem so onerous now that we have been out walking every day but one since we came here. Slowly our strength is returning after many months if enforced inactivity in SK between weather, general health and surgical recovery issues. We are loving it here. All my ongoing skin issues have cleared up for the first time in a couple of years, likely due to the humidity, and we have so much energy. It is nearly unbelievable how much more energy we both have. 

Shortly after arriving back to the suite it was time to get ready to go to the in-law family Shabbat dinner, where we would finally get to meet the rest of our daughter-in-law’s family. What a great time was had by all. We met father, uncle, brother and family as well as a cousin we already knew. The Shabbat blessings on the bread and wine were carried out in Hebrew by our daughter-in-law and her uncle with the English translation given by her cousin. Her two year old nephew added life to the party, the food was spectacular yet simple: challah bread, top quality Georgian red wine, salmon, roast chicken, tabouleh salad and mixed fresh fruit and tomato salad. Normally there would not be a cake, but we were also celebrating the cousin’s birthday so there was carrot cake and a scrumptious plum and cardamom cake. After my giant lunch at the deli I was able to keep my appetite well under control, thankfully. There were yummy appetizers before dinner but I was careful to have only a couple of bites of caraway bread with chicken liver pate and a Czechoslovakian cheese spread, two olives and a tiny mushroom tartlet. Yay me! Hahaha

We are heading to our son’s home early this afternoon for a bagel brunch. Our daughter-in-law’s father, brother and family will also be there for a final visit before they fly back to their own homes in Toronto and San Diego. What a treat it has been meeting them. 

Tomorrow we hope to attend what appears to be a somewhat thriving and vibrant Episcopal church a few blocks from here. The 11am service utilizes the pipe organ and full choir, so I think that is the one we will attend, since the 8:30am service utilizes only the organ and I cannot visualize our happily laid back selves being awake and ready to go quite that early in the morning, haha. 

Monday we need to put together a full day away. The city utility company has chosen that day to shut off the hot water and AC for a full 24 hour inspection of some kind. Losing the AC is no hardship as we find keeping all the windows open at all times just as effective. Our windows are well shaded by other tall buildings leaving us perpetually in the shade. So the suite is somewhat dark and gloomy, but always comfortably cool. We will still be able to boil water on the gas stove as far as we know, so as long as we actually still have running water we will be fine. The hot water should be back on at 6am Tuesday….fun and games!

On The Other Hand…

…..we COULD pay the equivalent of $13.48cad or $9.99usd for 10 slices of precooked bacon, full sodium count.  NOT when I can get 8 slices at home for $7.99 with reduced sodium. The expensive bacon packs are sold at D’agostino’s….a very high priced grocery store that seems to be empty of customers most of the time. There are always many more staff visible than customers.  In fact we see so few customers inside either of the two D’ag stores near us that I am starting to wonder if they are a front for some other sort of more nefarious activity! Hahaha…..If they just sold reduced sodium potato chips they would have a regular customer in my husband….who is currently online desperately seeking a retailer who carries either the Cape Cod brand of lower sodium chips, or someone who carries Hal’s brand. Hal’s doesn’t banner their bags as having lower sodium chips inside, but reading the nutritional values listed on the packaging confirms that they are indeed more amenable to my husband’s allowed daily sodium intake allowance. I wish him well in his search. Now that he is reacting to rice the same way he reacts to corn products we have had to strike one more of his own personal major food groups from his list of yummy possibilities. Sigh…..hopefully potatoes will not be next! 

Different Shopping Choices For Groceries

 I am having a bit of fun looking at the differences in grocery products and costs here compared to home. One huge difference is in the size and price of a loaf of bread. The number of slices of bread per loaf 🍞 here for what I would call the regular lower cost grocery store loaf, is 18-20 slices for $1.39usd ($1.93cad) compared to 12-14 slices in the equivalent quality Canadian bread loaves costing $2.79cad ($2.01usd). On the other hand a six ounce jar of Japanese yuzu marmalade here is a high $10.45usd so in Canada the same jar could be $14.48cad, also known as, “NO WAY ON GOD’S LITTLE GREEN EARTH AM I GOING TO PAY THAT MUCH FOR MARMALADE!!!” Hahaha….so in cases like that I stop mentally figuring the exchange rates; I just purchase the product and enjoy it! What is shocking to me is how many grocery products, even figuring in the exchange rate, are substantially lower in price than in Canada…at least in our part of Canada…far more products than I thought. Grocery prices for many items we found in the Hannaford’s grocery near Red Hook were so good that before we came home from the cabin our kids stocked up on groceries for themselves and ferried them home to NYC. 

This morning we have been graced with light rain. Just as it began falling I took a short walk to Duane Reade pharmacy for some meds. It was lovely striding along with the tiny drops cooling me off. When I arrived at the pharmacy the clerks were determined I was going to have my annual ‘flu shot because, “the kids go back to school next week and they gonna be spreading’ that stuff everywhere!” The one sweet girl took me by the arm and started leading into the back of the pharmacy to the injection site before I understood what was happening and managed to avoid a poke in the arm that I didn’t want. I explained I was from Canada and my ‘flu shots are up to date. Then my arm was released from her determined death grip and I was allowed to make my purchases. We are finding many pharmacies in our neighborhood are aggressively promoting all manner of vaccines and we wonder if it is an attempt to counteract the misinformation and scare tactics presently being spread around this country and our own. You certainly could not accuse the staff at our local Duane Reade of being lackadaisical about ensuring every customer coming in had every opportunity to be vaccinated! 

We may or may not follow through with our plan to wander over to the Morgan. It feels like it should be a lazy day today; a stay home to read books and hand wash some undies kind of day. Traffic is gridlocked here more than usual so there are many more impatient drivers, car horns blaring at other drivers who can’t move anyway. 

The possibility of heavier rain and winds this afternoon and evening has prompted yet another possible flash food watch, as well as possible tornado activity closer to the upstate areas and over east closer to Boston. Weather watches seem to be issued well in advance of any and all possible problems, hours and even days ahead of the arrival of forecast storms. Good to be prepared, of course, but the dire possibilities seem to actually occur so rarely that New York City dwellers seem to pretty much ignore them and continue on about their daily business until the last possible second when the direst of events are already in progress. It will be interesting to see what really does happen with the weather today.

Sleep 😴 Of Champions!

 I won the contest as to what to have for dinner last night: teriyaki chicken and chicken katsu bento boxes so crammed with food that we brought home enough for a meal today as well. Yummy! We will also finish eating the last of the tomatoes our son and his wife bought us at their local farmers’ market when we first arrived. They also pick up fresh produce every Thursday from “Farmer Ted” who brings in his garden gleanings from his farm upstate. Spectacular stuff! 

We finished dinner at 6pm, about the time most New Yorkers are slowly waking up to the fact that a meal sometime between then and 9pm might be a good idea. Eating before 7pm pretty much guarantees us a nearly deserted restaurant space and freshly prepared food. Love it! 😊 

By the time 7pm rolled around we both had to admit we were completely exhausted from the poor night of sleep previously, my allergies and a certain amount of stress over an upcoming dinner party that may be socially awkward. So, we wisely, (for once), got ourselves ready for bed and read ourselves to sleep.  My husband was a goner by 8pm and I shut my light out at 8:30pm to enjoy a 9 hour, deep sleep. 

We finally figured out how to open all the windows in here, so we slept with them wide open all night. The “fresh” air dissipated the odour of carpet /room deodorizer sufficiently to grant me this wonderful sleep, awakening with far less congestion in my sinuses and throat this morning.

It is supposed to rain late this afternoon and into the evening. Hopefully that will cool things down slightly as we are losing the comfortably moderate temperatures and heading back into the heat. For the next 7-10 days at least we are looking at daytime highs in the mid 90F range. We knew these lovely days in the mid 70F range were too great to last, but we have been grateful for every one of them. 

Great transportation news for us: to get to the dinner tomorrow evening we can catch a bus right across the street that takes us to within two blocks of our destination. We have had great success with the buses and subways thus far and apart from the initial pathfinding glitch last week, my husband has done a spectacular job of navigating. 

This morning we hope to walk over to the Morgan to see some of the lighting projects our son worked on. Their main exhibition right now is on ancient tarot cards….not of great interest but we do want to see the Morgan library. It is very close to “home” so there is no rush to get transportation. Our own feet will do nicely.

Oh Frick!

 We received a nice surprise this morning! Our son had the morning off so he wondered if he could accompany us to the Frick Museum. Of course we said he could. Since he is extremely familiar with the collection, having worked there several times in the last couple of years lighting various exhibitions, he knew exactly which salons we would enjoy the most. What a joy to see works by Rembrandt and Turner, Veronese, Goya, Hals…..the list goes on. It was a delight for all of us to see our favourite painting: Saint Francis in Ecstasy (Saint Francis in the Desert) by Giovanni Bellini! It was painted around 1475-1480. The painting contains a fair amount of symbolism that my husband enjoys. It was amazing to see the actual painting!! There are rooms filled with oriental porcelain and small bronzes, as well as some incredible medieval works from between the 13th and 15th centuries. The colours of the medieval works are still vibrant: reds and oranges in the Italian works and blues and green favoured by the German painters.

Unfortunately the pigments used by artists in the time of Rembrandt, as well as the use of so much linseed oil, are blackening. Details in many of the paintings of that era are disappearing, fading away to black. The fading colours are called Fugitive Pigments and it is a shame their green, blue and brown vibrancy does not last forever the way the bright medieval pigments seem to. Grateful we saw some of these famous works before the remaining background details blacken into obscurity.

After a delightful couple of hours there admiring the paintings and the lovely fountain featured in the inner courtyard, it was time for lunch. Even though our son has often worked at the Frick he has never eaten a restaurant meal in this most exclusive and expensive area of the entire city. So, he contacted his wife’s aunt who lives in a penthouse only blocks away from the Frick. She suggested the Leo Cafe at the nearby Asia Society Museum. Tucked away at 725 Park Avenue we nearly missed the unassuming looking building. The cafe there was perfect for us: clean, quiet due to a small number of customers, and a short but comprehensive menu. My son had a flank steak sandwich on ciabatta bread with spicy chips,  my husband enjoyed a salmon bowl with a large piece of salmon on a bed of quinoa and assorted cold vegetables, while I had a chicken salad: six large slices of chicken on a bed of shredded curly cabbage, mixed greens, dried shiitake mushrooms, green onions, diced fresh pears and a large amount of slivered papaya. Oh wow, we really enjoyed the clean restaurant, attentive staff, muted sunlight, surrounding greenery, small number of customers and most delicious foods at an incredibly reasonable price. The quiet ambiance was conducive to family visiting before our son had to get back to his studio to continue packing for the move that will now happen early next week….giving us an unexpectedly free day tomorrow to do something on our own that neither of the kids would enjoy. Maybe a ferry ride over to  Staten Island for the day? Could be raining by late afternoon so if we can get ourselves moving in the morning we could get to the Island in time for lunch at Blue, then home before the rain falls. Think I will suggest that to my husband. 

On our way home this afternoon we stopped in at a museum only a block from home: American Kennel Club’s Museum of the Dog. We knew nothing about it and had low expectations, but it was the most fun we have had at such a cute place in ever so long. The walls on the ground floor are set up like a portrait gallery for dogs of any and all breeds. Some of the artists are gifted at realistically capturing the various expressions on their poochy subjects’ faces and the fluid motions of their muscles when walking or running.  There was a large ceramics collection, antique dog collars and leashes,  an interactive video where you can play at being a professional dog trainer, interactive dog recognition and breed histories challenges, a wall covered in drawings and paragraphs about their own dogs written by elementary school children, amazing full sized bronzes and heavy ceramics of several breeds…two full sized ceramic replicas of Dalmatian spotted Great Danes immediately caught my attention. On the top of the three floors of exhibits was an art contest: 20 works of art and photography created by local dog lovers. We were each given a ballot when we paid the entry fee and chose our most favourite from among the twenty. That was fun. I loved a small bronze of a dog carrying a large stick in its jaws, running toward someone with the obvious intent of wanting to play Fetch! It was titled, “Favourite Stick”. My husband voted for a black and white headshot of a rescue bulldog cuddling up head to head with its new owner and it was captioned, “You Chose Me!”  We each took a self photo that was then matched to what breed of dog each of us most resembled. I have done this before several times over the years, in various places. As always I was matched with a bulldog, but my husband turned his head just as his photo was being taken, so he matched with a bulldog as well and I didn’t feel so badly, hahaha. The biggest joy for me was discovering oversized AKC tee shirts for sale in the gift shop! Now I have the extra item of sleepwear I have been needing for the rest of the trip! YES!  👏 

In a couple of hours it will be time for dinner. I would like to return to the sushi shop we went to last week, but am guessing my tired husband will prefer to remain here and finish up the last tomato 🍅 and remaining strips of skinny bacon 🥓 for sandwiches. We shall see whose views win out tonight! Hohoho!

We have finally opened all the windows to try to rid this suite of the disgusting deodorizer that has been making me ill since we arrived. Tonight I will try sleeping on the living room sofa with all three windows open and see if it helps rid me of the overnight congestion. Here’s hoping….

A Happy Ending To The Day

 At 6pm today I realized it had been five hours since lunch and to keep my blood sugar happy I should prepare dinner, but after our large portion of protein lunches neither my husband nor I were at all hungry. We decided to go for a short walk instead, this time doing a bit of exploring on the avenues immediately to the west of us: Lexington, Park and Madison. We wanted to do a reconnaissance tour of Bryant Park and the main branch of the NYC public library so we could take photos of the iconic stone lions in front of the building, locate the Museum of the Dog, take a setting sun photo of the Chrysler Building, photos of the ceiling in the main concourse of Grand Central Station and locate the oldest Japanese grocery store in Manhattan which opened in 1910. All of these places are within 4 blocks of our apartment, so on another day we will go to the library and the Museum of the Dog. We had planned to go tomorrow, but our son is available to meet us at the Frick Museum in the morning before he goes to his studio, so we will do those things the following day. So many interesting things to see right in our own neighbourhood. By the time we wandered home again it was 8pm before we made out bacon and tomato sandwiches! Next week we want to return to upstate New York for a day so my husband can go to the motorcycle museum we didn't have time to see on our way to the cabin. The following week we will take a day to go to Staten Island to enjoy a good walk and lunch at our favourite restaurant there: Blue. Time for some seafood! Lots to see and do in this area of the country.

Good Housekeeping….Weeeeell, Mediocre At Least!

 It has been a productive day despite my miserable sleep last night. Amazing how this cycle of antihistamines is helping me to keep going day after day.

After a leisurely breakfast here at home we got ourselves showered and ready for the day, packed up our dirty clothes and headed to the basement laundry room. The washers and dryers are large capacity so we were able to easily wash and dry everything in about 90 minutes time. With so much space in the bin dryer to tumble dry, two shirts were all that needed ironing…easy peasy! Round trip cost per load, $7.50. Done and done. Now I have to come up with another 30 quarters for our next load about ten days from now, hahaha! It feels good to have all clean clothes again.

For lunch we walked across the street to Sam’s place, a lovely little Italian restaurant with high quality food and service and high prices, white linen table cloths and sterling silver tableware, white shirted, black panted, bow tied waiters…worth every penny. Our assigned waiter asked where we are from and was very interested in learning about the extent of our Canadian wildfires. At Sam’s you don’t bother looking at the menu unless you need to pay less for your lunch than the cost of the daily special entrees as the manager rattles them off with nary a mention of price. We have eaten so few expensive meals we didn’t care today, just ordered a veal and a chicken dish and paid a pretty penny for all the deliciousness! I can’t even remember the names of the dishes as they flew past my ears, missing my brain by a mile, in rapid fire, heavily Italian tainted English. My husband couldn’t hear or understand a word of it, but did catch the word veal at some point, so he ordered that. Haha! 

He received six decent sized scallops of veal in a very light tomato vinaigrette  style sauce and a healthy portion of hot green beans, carrots and cherry tomatoes. The large plate was filled with veal and veggies. My butterflied chicken breast was lightly breaded and covered in a mixed greens and tomato salad in a light oil and white balsamic dressing. Despite the size of the flayed chicken breast it was a light tasting meal that left me happily full rather than stuffed past need. My husband capped his meal with an espresso with delicious almond filled biscotti and pronounced himself thoroughly satisfied. We will definitely go to Sam’s place again, where the older owner/proprietor greets all guests as if they are cherished friends, checks on the enjoyment of the meal and provides a heart handshake on the way out. 

Immediately after lunch we went for a ten block round trip walk to Lidl Foods for more breakfast items for the rest of this week. Between Lidl’s and Trader Joe’s on the other side of the street from Lidl’s, we are well taken care of for groceries in the immediate area.

After we arrived home I decided to give our kitchen floor a good washing. The housekeeping is quite adequate here apart from the kitchen floor. It was grubby when we arrived and no less grubby after our room cleaning yesterday, so I used a J-Cloth provided for washing any dishes not able to be put into the dishwasher, filled an old cereal bowl with soapy water and went after the kitchen tiles. The floor looks so much better and feels clean underfoot at last. Could I have called for housekeeping to come on to wash that floor properly? Yes. Should I have? Also yes. BUT if I clean something myself then I know it has been done properly! It is my very own hang up and I apologize for none of the cleaning I have done in various long term stay suites on both sides of the border over the years!

Back In The City

 Sadly we all had to leave the cabin yesterday to return to regular daily life in the city. The kids will return to work and we will try to snag a washing machine and have a laundry day here. 

After feeling so much better the past two days, I am struggling again to sleep here. It is 2:30am and I am wrapped up in a sheet on the living room sofa so I don’t wake my husband by putting on a bedroom light. I am starting to wonder if there is an allergen in this apartment: the laundry soap used on the bedding, some kind of powdered carpet deodorizer in the large throw rugs, a hidden plug in air freshener…I need to try to track down this information because something in here seems to be setting my sinuses off again…a sort of floral odour that is very subtle, but present. Just praying I can figure it out and eliminate whatever it is. I am so disappointed to find myself awake again in the middle of the night and feeling less than well. I think I will pack my nose with Vicks VapoRub to cover up that smell. 

A happy thing though is that a few minutes ago I found a couple of emails from friends at home that were newsy. If I try answering them now I will never get back to sleep, so will wait until tomorrow. 

Having the extra hours at the cabin yesterday made the entire day more relaxed for us all. The kids went swimming again, my husband made baking powder biscuits for brunch, his third day of yummy brunch fixings after pancakes and French toast. We completed a wickedly difficult puzzle…well the other three did. I was the assistant who asked if this or that piece went here or there with a growing degree of accuracy as the days passed. It was a fun project. 

The drive back into the city was along another gorgeous, tree lined highway. We came back into the most northern part of Brooklyn and stopped at an Irish style pub owned by acquaintances of the kids. Lovely pub, mediocre food and a brusque chat with this acquaintance that made me want to box his ears….don’t know what was up with him, but considering the only other customers were a pair of foul mouthed drunks, he could have expressed a bit more interest in the fact that our kids had come so far out of their way to support his business. Grrrrr….mommy noises! It left a nasty bruise on our otherwise happy trip home.

The final trip home was through the city on very busy and crowded streets and byways. The rural highways and some of the city streets seem narrow to us so the tolerances between vehicles are smaller. Travelling for a couple of hours with cars speeding past only inches away was somewhat nerve wracking for us, so we were grateful both our kids are such experienced and aggressive NYC drivers. They drive like everyone else in the city, whereas my husband and I are a bit leery. Our hesitation would irritate the other drivers and potentially cause accidents. 

I don’t know if we were happy or sad last evening as we transitioned abruptly from lakes and trees to skyscrapers and exhaust fumes, but our kids were excited to be back in the city. They are already planning a return to the cabin at the next possible opportunity; perhaps in the winter to enjoy the snow and the lovely looking fireplace. We are most grateful they took us there to share the more rural experience together. It was so much fun, conducive to getting to know our daughter in law better. 

And now, to try to sleep here on the sofa. Praying about these allergies. Too much has gone into the planning and execution of this vacation to have it ruined by my sinuses! 

Our Last Day In The Country Cottage

 A happy surprise for today: our daughter in law was able to arrange to have today’s afternoon meeting on the phone from right here at the cabin. Since new guests are not booked in this evening we have permission to remain here for the day. Our son doesn’t have to be back at work until tomorrow morning. All of us were dreading having to set an alarm for this morning and racing about packing up, the drive home with the stress of possibly being tied up in traffic back in the city and having the worry of making the time deadline for the meeting. Today will now be much more relaxed and perhaps the kids will be able to return to the small lake they discovered yesterday so they can swim some more. I no longer have the hip mobility to swim, unfortunately.

Yesterday we had morning and evening deluges of rain, followed by baking sun. Such a pretty day, with raindrops glistening from the leaves and flowers in the front yard. Two deer graze regularly here, a doe and fawn. As bucolic as that scene is first thing in the morning over breakfast on the front porch, the growing deer population is spreading ticks and Lyme disease throughout the county at a rapid pace. However, I don’t think about that as I sit here in peace watching them enjoying fresh green shoots of grass.

An extra day in the woods watching the deer and getting the occasional burble from the Kill during rare breaks from the humming cicadas…luxury! 

Where We Actually Are Located!

Our beautiful cabin in the woods is in Columbia County near the hamlet of Elizaville, whose claim to fame is a 50’s style diner plunked on a grassy knoll just above a pond at the edge of a feed corn field, the only place of business anywhere in sight for several miles in all directions.  We have just come from a very late lunch at the diner, not having eaten breakfast until after 10am. The kids are upstream at the swimming hole in the Roeliff Jansen Kill that flows along the back edge of this property.  My  husband is working on the puzzle we started a couple of days ago and I am blogging and dozing alternately. Feeling so much better today with using the antihistamines. I slept for 8 hours last night.

In between meals we drove to the Bard College campus for a tour around its lovely green lawns and gardens and campus buildings, hidden among tall leafy, ivy wrapped trees. Twelve years ago our son completed his MFA after enrolling in their intense programme taking up two to three summer months for three summers running. What a treat to finally see this glorious place that confirmed in my son’s mind New York State was where he wanted to live.  We also toured the on campus Hessel Museum and Art Gallery where we were treated to an exhibition of art dealer and abstract artist Dorothy Parsons, long known more as an art dealer….she was instrumental in helping artists such as Jackson Pollock and Agnes Martin become more well known. Although she did not paint her own first abstract painting until the age of 47, she was one of the first female artists to receive acclaim in that genre of work. It was so much fun to see her works from the 1950’s up until the 1970’s. She passed away in 1982, I believe. The exhibition is curated by one of my son’s Bard mentors…the one who first contacted him with an invitation to apply, Amy Sillman. We particularly enjoyed watching two short filmed presentations about Dorothy Parsons put together from old black and white tv interviews where we were able to see and listen to Dorothy Parsons herself. She was known during her lifetime as more of a dealer than an artist in her own right.

We enjoyed driving along today on several of the many rural roads in this area. Intersections to access most of them from the slightly wider connectors like 9G, are nearly as hidden from view as the main rural roads themselves due to the long expanses of thick forest along the main corridors. Once off 9G for example the vistas open up with feed corn fields and small well kept acreages owned often by wealthy New York City families who want to own a couple of horses and a cow during their summer holiday residencies there. Driving for so many miles through these trimmed, mowed and freshly painted houses, BMW’s and Corvettes and Harley Davidsons and huge new 3/4 ton trucks in the driveways, brings to our minds afresh the degenerate, scruffy looking rural areas around our own city, populated by real farmers who work so hard and don’t always have the time or financial resources to keep the home quarter residences and yards looking so pristine. Every property we have seen since leaving the city could be featured on a postcard. It looks most strange to us.

Tonight we will all pack up as much as possible to be ready to leave early in the morning. We will blast off in a reasonable enough time to break for breakfast part way back so our son can rest a bit before the last push back into city traffic. We have a 3pm deadline to get our daughter in law back for a meeting so we can’t dilly dally around here getting ready to leave. Just as well or it would be noon before we leave, haha. We have all been very relaxed here! 

A laundry day will be next on our agenda back at the rental and then we will choose a couple of sightseeing destinations for mid week before a big Shabbat dinner with the other side of the family on Friday…the end of our second week in NYC. The time is flying by too quickly. 

While The Cats (Are) Away, THIS Mouse…..

 ….is happily reading, dozing, snacking, dozing….in other words having a grand afternoon alone. 

I took my first antihistamine three hours ago and the rough edges are already coming off the worst of my sinus reactions. Most of the inflammation has gone down after 12 hours of misery and as I complete the full recommended cycle, AND stay away from breathing in what the A/C units are pumping out, I will be just fine again in a very few days. Knowing from the start that I didn’t have a cold was at least somewhat relaxing while I waited for the meds to kick in.

For lunch today my son grilled burgers on a grill over a charcoal fire….my burger was cooked indoors on the stove by my enduring, long suffering husband who didn’t want to risk my becoming ill from the lighter fluid fumes and charcoal smoke from the grill outside. Bless his kind, pampering heart.❤️ I also suspect he didn’t want to spend the afternoon holding my head over an open toilet bowl, but hey, ya’ know, at least he is always helpful to me in every situation…..  Poor guy: as a wife I am a LOT of work.

While my son was cooking meat, I had fun preparing zucchinis and onions for grilling, as well as tomato slices and pickles and cheese to flop onto the hot burgers when they hit the buns, plus radishes and mixed greens for our lunch. My daughter in law put the salad together and mixed a tasty olive oil and balsamic dressing for it….yup we all had a hand in preparing the food, then wolfing it down like three starving people. You would have incorrectly assumed we had not eaten in weeks! 

Once lunch ended my husband and the kids chose a route, set off for a hiking trail a few miles from here, and……that was a couple of hours ago…or more…I started writing this post….and….90 minutes later ….well……

I just woke up. 

So much for the snacking and reading portions of my lovely afternoon alone !! 

C’mon Canada Post: Step Up To The Pre-Paid Plate, OK?

 I am disappointed to have received an email this morning from our friend who is checking our place, supposedly only for the purpose of watering a few plants outside and going inside a couple of times a week to check the place to satisfy the terms of our tenant insurance policy. For whatever reason she decided to take a quick peek in our mailbox even though we received the hoped for confirmation notice that our mail would indeed start being held last Monday. A couple of days later she discovered mail in the box and more mail yesterday, 5 days post hold. Sigh…..despite how much we had to pay for the service, obviously either it isn’t being held after all, or at least some is slipping through, in this case several of the more important pieces we most particularly didn’t want to risk getting soaked with rain in the box, or stolen, which is not unusual for our complex. Big, unhappy sigh about once again being financially ripped off and let down by a government institution. I feel badly for what the Canada Post employees have been themselves going through with the government, but please don’t take it out on someone like me who is trying to support your cause by continuing to use the postal service regularly. 

I feel badly for my friend who needed to be relieved of mail checking duties for this trip of ours.  We fear she is going to feel obligated to stop by more often than necessary because of her desire to be of service to her friends, so hopefully she will not put herself out more than she already is on our account!

My dear son drove into town this morning and purchased some antihistamines for me to use. Bless him. After a miserable night with my flora 🤧 allergies I should be in much better condition by this time tomorrow. Now the rest of the family are preparing for a hike and I am going to enjoy this lovely house on my own!  

Or have a nap.

Whichever comes first….

In A Cottage In A Wood…..🎼

This weekend I find myself, with the family, residing in a luxurious three storey , four bedroom luxurious “cabin” tucked away among the trees somewhere north of Red Hook NY.  The whole day had an aura of unreality, (or at least of serious disconnect from my own reality), as we left NYC after a long drive across Manhattan, onto the massive George Washington Bridge and out into the more rural area leading us here to the gorgeous Hudson Valley. Being personally familiar with only NYC in this state, it was a bit of a shock to make the transition from concrete jungle to heavily treed forest, complete with grazing roadside deer, so quickly. Our son drove us along the three and a half hour route with his wife and GPS guiding him. The traffic was not all that bad for a Friday, so that was a relief. 

Along the route we passed the West Point military academy and that set the tone for the surroundings of the rest of our trip through scattered towns that all look like movie sets: posters honouring various members of the military hanging from the light standards, colourful three storey clapboard houses on large lots with manicured lawns, white and black wrought iron picket fences, American flags drooping in the heat from the support posts of wide verandas and a scattered tossing of subtly sized political posters, every downtown sporting at least one small greening copper statue honouring fallen soldiers from the previous wars. Every town we drove through had the near perfection of a Hollywood set and to be honest I found it a bit eerie….breathtakingly beautiful, but eerie nonetheless. 

A couple of hours into our journey we stopped for lunch at the town of Beacon: giant sub sandwiches stuffed with chicken and Caesar salad or falafel with tomatoes, plus a “small” order of tater tots. We sampled for the first time canned coconut water with chocolate….it sounded like such a bizarre combination my husband just had to try it, but it tasted like chocolate milk! Yum! 

The town of Beacon was also a destination stop for us to spend several relaxing and rewarding hours at the Dia Beacon Art Museum. It is my son’s favourite art gallery and when he did his Master of Fine Arts degree at nearby Bard College a number of years ago he visited Dia Beacon numerous times. Dia Beacon is a huge building that was originally a printing facility for Nabisco packaging…built a few years after the turn of the last century. Unusually for typically dark and gloomy factories of those days, the building was designed in such a way that it is filled with panes and panels of glass in the walls and slanted overhead skylights so that the entire giant building is filled with natural light. None of the exhibits are lit by electric lights….amazing. It is perfectly lit by the sun overhead. If you are interested in architecture and the modernization of old industrial buildings into more modern, reappointed spaces look up the Dia Beacon and read its history and about the foresight of the original builders as well as the man who recreated it to be the incredible art museum it became in 2003. 

It is a museum dedicated to abstract artists and sculptors such as beloved Saskatchewan artist Agnes Martin, and Richard Tuttle who inspired my own son to pursue art as a career and lifestyle and even in his 85th year continues to be my son’s friend and mentor. Sculptor Louise Bourgeois’s huge metal Crouching Spider is part of their collection, the first woman artist to be featured among what was originally the collected works of white male artists. … to the point where it is now a bit of a joke. Now many women are featured. 

I was blown away by the surreal sculptures created by Richard Serra: massive curved  sculptures of weathered steel many feet tall that we could walk into the centre of, either directly or through narrow curved pathways that left me feeling like I had been abandoned at the bottom of a deep hole. These pieces from his Torqued Ellipses collection are so massive they are in their own deep space apart from the main floor gallery spaces. I learned that Serra and particularly Donald Judd began the movement of employing fabricators to build such large or such complicated works that would be physically impossible or too time consuming for the artist to complete alone.

Another fascinating sculptor, at least to me, is Michael Heizer. He specializes apparently in embedded stone megaliths and negative space floor cuts. One of his works at the Dia is a series of four geometrical shaped concrete floor cuts. Standing at the top of the cuts is like standing at the top of a concrete canyon where the shape of the cut carries straight downward for I don’t know how many feet. They appear to go on down to the centre of the earth! 

After feasting our eyes and over cramming our senses we took another hour to sit outside the museum midst the trees, sipping cold yuzu spritzers and debriefing about all that we had seen, before carrying on for our final hour of driving to the cabin. 

It took us awhile to find it as we were missing one portion of the address, but after driving past the same small corner of land covered in hay bales and fields of feed corn stalks, we contacted the owner of the cabin. She directed us to a nearly invisible, narrow side road, we followed it for a quarter mile and suddenly there at last was our accommodation sitting among the trees with rolling lawns, a bbq space and a creek at the far end of the property burbling along quite happily unaware of how lost the newest guests had gotten themselves.

We hauled our gear into the cabin, unpacked, explored its decks and screened in porch and basement games room, made a grocery list and headed south,  through Red Hook and into the town of Rhinebeck for a fabulous Indian feast at Cinnamon, followed by a quick shopping trip at Hannaford’s grocery which features the lowest grocery prices any of us have seen since the Covid pandemic. Even after factoring in the exchange rate with Canadian dollars I purchased the groceries for between one third and one half the price I would have paid for the same items at home in Regina. Incredible! 

Back at home we relaxed with cups of peppermint tea and began putting together a large and complicated puzzle that we thought would take us all weekend to complete. Between our son’s wife displaying more puzzle ability than she thought she had and my son’s skill of quickly seeing the correlation of shapes and colours, they put together a complete first corner in record time. 

By ten thirty we were all happily picking bedrooms and falling into bed, but of course after four hours of sleep I have been awake for the last two hours and am feeling ready to return to the Land Of Nod for a couple of more hours until it is time for  breakfast. Then while the rest of the family is busy hiking through the tick infested forested lands, I will happily spend my day reading The Odyssey and catching up on my missing sleep. My respiratory allergies continue to drive me crazy so I am going to have to pick up a package of antihistamines at the first opportunity. Sigh…such a perfectly beautiful setting, complete with chorusing cicadas overnight, but death to my sinuses that had barely healed from the A/C fiasco back in the city. It is still nice though to have a break from all the concrete for a weekend.

 

Ponding And Flash Flooding!

Rain is teeming down outside during this dinner hour. There is intense ponding (I love this word) on the sidewalks and in the curb gutters and the city is under a flash flood warning….mind you most rain/thunder storms here tend to trigger this warning and sometimes it is indeed justified. My husband is currently out there in the rain on his way to Dagostino’s grocery to pick up a bottle of soy sauce for the fried rice dinner he is creating for himself out of our fridge full of leftovers. He is trying out the new umbrella I purchased this morning for our trip to the cabin tomorrow as it is supposed to rain there as well on Saturday. Rather than spending a lot of time hiking along the tree lined trails surrounding the cabin we will likely spend much of the time curled up with various new books we bought for the trip. 

Well, Mr. Soggy has just arrived home and is dripping water all over the floor, hahaha. I had such a huge lunch at Sarge’s Deli with our son today that a cheese sandwich will be all I need for dinner. 

The Benefits Of Getting Lost!

 We managed to find our way yesterday around the bus and subway systems to meet Aunty J for a tasty lunch at L’Ami Pierre….tasty Caesar salad and baguette chicken and brie sandwiches. We arrived a few minutes before she did, so sat on a bench outside people watching. The noon hour brought out hordes of younger up and coming business men dressed nearly identically in shirts of white or pale blue and dark navy suit pants and jackets, brown shoes. I guess individuality in suit and shirt colour is not encouraged here. It was most interesting watching this blue suited army. The women tended more toward blacks and greys, their feet shod in dark coloured flats with at least some variety of styles.

After lunch we headed to the Museum of Modern Art where we enjoyed looking at the small exhibition of older Diego Rivera sketches and coloured drawings and paintings. Many of his works paid tribute of course to Frida Kahlo, fellow artist and romantic partner. I had forgotten that she died at the age of 47. The humour Rivera injected into his small drawings about man vs the machine was amusing while still making his point. One large painting paid tribute to those who overthrew dictator Diaz during the 1910 Mexican revolution. Apparently it lasted until 1917 and it took another three years for the country to stabilize. After the Rivera exhibition we stopped at an expansive exhibition of works by Marcel DuChamps. I had seen most of his newer paintings and modern sculptures such as his “Fountain” urinal collection, but what I had not seen before were his earlier published cartoons. They are hilarious! After we saw these two exhibits we sat for an hour outside in the lovely sculpture garden sipping proper iced tea (cold tea with ice cubes, no sugar) and chatting. It was a lovely afternoon.

At 4:30pm as we were leaving the MoMA my husband told me we were within walking distance of Barnes and Noble in case I wanted to pick up a couple of books to take to the cabin this weekend. It would save us having to get up early this morning to race off to the Strand bookshop. Seemed like a good idea at the time, so we confidently headed to 5th Avenue. 

Here we made our first mistake. My husband, the intrepid mountaineer path finder was looking at the street map on his phone and for some reason became directionally challenged. Instead of walking toward the Barnes and Noble outlet we were ten blocks away from starting point before he realized we were walking in the opposite direction! Groan…..we were going to have to retrace the same ten blocks, then start our hike to Barnes and Noble all over again. Nooooo….after two hours of walking, sauntering and standing at MoMA my hips were already tired. Oh well….

There were some lovely surprises though due to our misdirection. We came upon St. Thomas Church which my husband has been hoping to view since his first trip to NYC in 2018, we passed by the famous Plaza Hotel, fronted by gorgeous Pulitzer Fountain, the huge bronzed statue of General Sherman, and lo and behold, a street-side pop up from Strand Bookshop! Oh wow, how cool! Right there in plain sight was the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey that J recommended only an hour earlier. I snapped it up! Finding the Strand street side meant we wouldn’t have to go to Barnes and Noble, so could retrace the ten block error and head to the subway station to catch the train that would take us home.

Along that part of the route I realized how exhausted I was getting, but walking along beside the south end of Central Park was a gorgeous visual distraction. Until……hey, wait a minute…to get to the subway we should have turned away from the park at the exact point of having retraced our ten block mistake! Wha? My sheepish husband rechecked the route on his map and realized he had made the same mistake in orientating us to the route on the map. This time we were “only” six blocks out of harmony, but oooh my, such long blocks! Another retracing of our steps to our original starting point, we covered the four block walk to the subway, finally arriving to catch an immediate train as I was about to collapse from exhaustion. (Please note, I was also very ill with the respiratory reaction to sleeping with the AC on overnight three nights in a row.) I must have looked pretty ill by then because two women on the rush hour jammed train cleared seats for me to sit down. Fortunately when we disembarked we were only three blocks from home. I staggered into our suite, dropping my cane into the middle of the living room floor and collapsed on the sofa. By this time it was over six hours since I had eaten and after so much exercise my blood sugar was too low. My sweetly penitent husband, feeling humiliated by his route mistakes, made me a sandwich, forfeited his last slice of Japanese green tea cake roll to me and pampered me like crazy. The poor guy was so upset, I felt badly for him. There were so many nice surprises by us taking incorrect routes that there was no reason to be upset.

We were both in bed with the lights out by 8:45pm and we didn’t get up and going until 7:30 this morning. It is about 10:30 am now and I have made a trip to the nearest pharmacy a couple of blocks away for a small jar of my favourite respiratory healer: Vick’s VapoRub, at my husband’s insistence. Now I am at home resting while he makes a long loop to a few organic markets and  a computer store for a new mouse. He forgot to bring his and that is why we had so much trouble completing our government forms. Using the little roll pad on the laptop was frustrating and slow. It is nice to now be familiar enough with our neighbourhood to each be able to get out on our own. 

This morning our son is picking up the car from an in-law that we are borrowing for our trip to the cabin tomorrow. Once he finds a place to park it near his home he will come here for lunch and an afternoon visit. We may go to the Morgan, or I will send the guys on their own. I want to be as healed as possible before we go upstate tomorrow.

Yesterday was the hottest day yet at only +31C and today is a lovely +27C, with rain possible tonight and tomorrow. Love this weather. It is cooler than usual for August in NYC, but perfect for us.

Done With Forms….Hallelujah!

 Yesterday afternoon we struggled for the last time with filling out our required Customs and Immigration forms for online submission. They have been sent at last and a confirmation/registration number received. By the time we were done my husband had a stomach ache, but we did it! My husband did all of the research to complete his own form and then we tackled mine. Finally we are done, done, done and with my mobile phone issues now solved as well….again thanks to my husband’s ability to go online and research solutions, I no longer have Google Play chirping at me all night with unwanted messages! I woke up this morning and switched off the Do Not Disturb to find only one message waiting. Yippee! Clear All Notifications is a marvellous step to be able to take! 

Our son surprised us with an unexpected drop in visit after work last night. We walked across the street for Chinese food. It was quite decent….not spectacular but decent, tasty and piping hot. We spent a happy evening together. Our son is very excited that for a whole month we are neighbours. How lovely! We are excited as well. Although our vacation has only begun I am already realizing how difficult it will be to return home when it is over.

Well, Dang It! This Is Not Good…..

For some reason I forgot that I cannot sleep all night with the air conditioning blowing even slightly in the bedroom. That is why it was on all night for the first three nights of our vacation, and that is why I had to trundle a couple of blocks yesterday to Duane Reade Walgreens to get a camphor stick inhalant and an inhaler with very strong meds to start clearing my sinuses. Aiiii yiiiii….I am having a very bad reaction to the A/C. The medication in this OTC inhaler is much stronger than any of the permitted OTC inhalers I can purchase in Canada….thankfully. It is working well, but this morning my voice is gone and I am coughing. This is my typical A/C reaction….sigh. Constantly draining sinuses makes for a miserable time.

I don’t know how well our plans for today are going to work out but I will try to plough through them. I don’t feel ill, but not sure of the wisdom of pushing myself. It isn’t even 7am, so I have time to fully wake up and assess. Gosh, we are supposed to be heading upstate in a couple of days to the rental cabin….praying I can be well enough to go as the kids are footing the bill and I don’t want to be responsible for ruining everything. Would my praying family and friends be willing to pray with me about this? Thanks so much.

Characters I Have Met Thus Far

There are interesting people everywhere, aren’t there? I enjoy meeting them very much.

I enjoyed meeting the fellow on our first flight who white knuckled the landing in Toronto. His name is Donald. He lost his obviously dearly beloved wife several years ago and he seems rather lost without her. He was on his way to Crete for a vacation with his son and granddaughters…a 36 hour endurance test of a trip. Donald had a fabulous career with the oil and gas industry and later in a government position. He has been all over the world but despite having a son in Alaska and the other based out of London UK, he has chosen to remain living in our tiny prairie city close to his wife’s relatives.

At one grocery store we met checkout clerk Monserrat, a transgender male with the most glorious mane of long black hair I have ever seen. They are taking hormones to lower their voice and they gave us the most efficient check out experience we have ever had. When I asked if the store took cash or preferred credit card the response was, eyes sparkling, “Don’t make no nevermind to this store honey, long’s you pay the bill.” 

This morning at the pharmacy I met Keya from Bangladesh. She is an older woman who speaks and moves slowly like silk floating under water. She has been in New York for five years. She asked me where I was from and told me that many of her Bangladeshi friends and family have immigrated to Canada. She wanted to know if I like NYC as much as my homeland so we chatted a bit about that before I left the store. 

I already mentioned our lunch server at the La Guardia airport with her broad Bronx accent. This chain of diners will only hire servers whose accents reflect the stand out specific accent of the Bronx. You haven’t lived until you have been called, loud enough to be heard a mile away, “my dear people” by someone with a Bronx accent. It is terribly endearing.

Yesterday just before lunch there was a knock on our suite door. When I opened it there was Chris the Mexican repairman. He was terribly apologetic that he had not had time to complete two plumbing repairs before we checked. Could he do them now please? Of course! Chris confidently snaked out the bathtub drain and replaced the pipe under the kitchen sink. Then my husband asked if there was anything he could do to repair the metal plate on the floor where the entry hallway floor meets the entrance to the kitchen floor. That plate had been there to protect the edging of the carpet that used to be on the entryway floor before new oak tiles replaced it a couple of years ago. The plate was so old it was loose and shifting and the old nails holding it in place were stripped out and sticking up. Both my husband and son had scratched the bottoms of their feet on those nails. 

Chris had to call the request into what turned out to be an elderly, miserly curmudgeon….the owner of the building as it turned out.  Chris wanted to purchase a three dollar wooden oak strip, quickly stain it to match the existing oak tiles and thus remove the hideous old metal carpet plate altogether. Next thing we knew, Mr. Owner Of The Building hot footed it up to the suite from his office. Was there no way Chris could avoid the cost of a new three dollar oak strip and just find a way to reuse the ancient metal plate? Couldn’t he just screw it back on tighter? I thought my poor husband, retired building maintenance supervisor, was going to have apoplexy when the owner came up with this chintzy plan. To this point my husband had been sitting quietly at his computer saying nothing. However at this point he could no longer restrain himself. He interrupted the conversation to ask if perhaps Chris had in his supplies a particular glue that bonds metal to other surfaces. Hallelujah, as it happened, Chris had just that type of glue in his tool box. We had a nice chat with Mr. Owner, now smiling at the idea of saving three dollars on an oak strip when glue already purchased would work, and the he left much more cheery than he had been when he arrived. Hahaha…air yiii…

Chris didn’t think it was necessary to put any sort of weight on top of the strip to help it bond to the kitchen floor edge below and left quite happily in possession of a fairly generous tip from us for saddling him with an extra job he wasn’t counting on adding into his schedule, but my husband put dining room chair legs on top of where that strip was already lifting away from the floor, kept it there for a couple of hours until the glue was dry and in the end everyone was happy. The owner saved three dollars from the operations budget, Chris got himself an unexpected tip and we no longer have a safety issue for our feet! YES! Mission accomplished!

I wonder what other interesting people we will meet over the next month. 

This afternoon I will seek out an empty washing machine and do a small load of laundry so we can take all clean clothes to the cabin this weekend and I will stay home to rest while the clothes are washing. I forgot that I cannot sleep at night with the A/C running so now I am fighting a possible cold or allergy. There is a Walgreens pharmacy three blocks away so I tottered over there this morning, sans cane no less, to get nasal spray and a giant box of Kleenex for my bedside. My husband is shopping for a box 9f decent Indian tea at Kalustan’s, as well as a few fresh bagels. Usually he waits too long and they have sold out by the time he arrives at any of our area’s bagel shops. Hope he fares better today! 

We didn’t expect to see our son again until Thursday but he wants to come over after work tonight and have dinner while his wife has meetings of her own. Yay! A wonderful treat! 

Looks like I am going to have to get used to this iPad changing fonts at its own volition mid way through these posts, hahaha.

Fun With Phones!

My husband had a struggle yesterday getting my mobile phone set up to keep a copy of my I-94 available for quick download in case I ever need to present it. The struggle lasted all morning and then into the late night hours when the Google Play he was forced to put onto my phone in order to get Firefox in order to get Document File in order to get the I-94 “in the hole in the bottom of the sea”, started sending out message after message at 11pm before I had my phone shut off for the night. We couldn’t get the Incoming Text notification volume turned down for some reason but finally succeeded after freaking out about the tenants right around us possibly being awakened by the noise. What a nightmare! My phone then needed charging so I couldn’t shut it off overnight, but we finally got the Do Not Disturb to work. We were so tired when the first 25 notifications started arriving that we were completely bamboozled by how to make it stop! As soon as we get home I will have my phone scrubbed, purged of the whole works and return to my usual Phone Calls And Texts Only format. What an hilarious time we are having here with our technology, hahaha…

We did get out for the afternoon to explore our immediate neighbourhood a bit more. Completed our list of small purchases needed for food and kitchen comforts, found another discount grocery, a nice Japanese grocery and a great hardware store. 

We ate lunch at an Italian restaurant as the deli we wanted to go to still had a lineup at our late lunch time of 2pm. The Italian place wasn’t fantastic but it was packed with regulars who know every cook and server so the atmosphere was relaxed and fun. There was enough food to feed four people so we skipped cooking dinner last night and traded leftovers. I ate the last couple of slices of my husband’s chicken parm pizza…his so called personal sized pizza was 12 inches…and he finished up my giant plate of veal parmigiana and mountain of spaghetti. The spaghetti sauce was quite bland, but each table had a shaker of mixed Italian herbs to use “to taste”. We were rather liberal with our use of it and here at home my husband shook some Tabasco onto the remains to spice it up a bit more. The huge side salad that came with my meal was delicious and we both enjoyed sharing it. Today it is back to cooking for ourselves. 

Best grocery find of the day: no sugar added Kind bars. Not available in Canada. Also they are very low fat, as in less than a third of the fat content of the ones we get at home that I can eat only occasionally. Wish I had room in my luggage and a heart to fill in declaration forms so I could bring a few boxes back with me.

Getting Settled And Properly Registered

 It is wonderful to see our kids! They spent their weekend feeding us amazing meals, examining and then tricking out the somewhat deficient kitchen in our suite, (making sure the gas stove works properly, lending us a “properly sized and sharpened” kitchen knife, food for our first morning’s breakfast, tea, a cutting board, etc.), so we are now able to cook more than fried eggs and toast! They are both fabulous cooks so we have had two scrumptious dinners at their place already: Sezchuan chicken and mushrooms with rice and chili pepper green beans on night one followed by sausages with sautéed red and yellow peppers, onions, zucchini and squash on night two. Yum! Our offerings to them will be more along the lines of pancakes and French Toast, haha City vs Prairie cuisines? haha

Yesterday our son spent the afternoon with us. We began with a late lunch at a Japanese restaurant with extremely reasonable prices and Bento boxes filled full of deliciousnesses! For the equivalent price in Canadian dollars the Japanese restaurant we occasionally go to outside of our own city at home is ripping us off in terms of portion size to price. We could have brought half our meal home yesterday, except that it was so tasty we ate most of the meat and veggies and tofu, saving only a large portion of the rice and edamame for lunch at home today. 

Then we found our neighbourhood Trader Joe’s and CVS Pharmacy and went shopping. My son and husband carried home most of what we needed and today my husband and I will return to the store to complete our “Necessities List”. TJ’s is only five blocks away and CVS three blocks, so that is a blessing. While the selection at TJ’s is fairly basic, the prices are fantastic so we can do most of our shopping there.

The kids are working this morning so we will spend the time watching the rain coming down and filling out the very detailed Customs and Immigration forms required of anyone who has plans to remain in the U.S. for a period of 30 days or more. My husband started working on his yesterday, but had to spend so much time on a different website specializing in explaining what some of the questions mean that the C/I website timed out, all his work to that point was lost and he has to start all over again. To do both our forms today is going to take a couple of hours. Had we realized the extent of the paperwork required for this length of stay we would have still had to lease our apartment for the full 30 days as required by law in Manhattan, but checked out by day 29 to avoid all the detailed paperwork.  This particularly complicated form is not needed for leaving the U.S., but failure to file would likely mean we would  be refused re-entry in the future. So, filing these forms will be a good way to fill a rainy morning. 

We did get our I-94 forms filled out and submitted yesterday. Those were shorter and easier to understand. Those forms register our presence in the country, that we entered legally and we must carry a copy of them with us at all times. It was interesting seeing on that website all the information registered there about our previous trips to the U.S.  It actually clarified for us some of the dates of previous visits where our memories were a little fuzzy. 

This suite is kinda cute. It is a flashback to the 1970’s in layout and furnishings. The lamps and heavy dark furniture are a flashback in time for us. The layout of the apartment is almost identical to the layout of my and my roommate’s apartment where we lived in Calgary in 1973! It is much larger though and the spacious rooms are a treat. The whole place seems to be typically New York City shabby and comfortable. Little attention has been paid to the kitchen area, but with the assistance of our kids we will now be equipped to enjoy it. The price we are paying to be in midtown Manhattan makes it incredibly easy to overlook the age of our accommodation. The staff thus far are lovely to deal with. The laundry room is very nice with new machines and large tables for sorting clothes. The only thing I will have to buy today is a non skid rubber mat for the bathtub. It may not be absolutely necessary, but I have to be so careful and there is no “roll bar”, as I like to call it, to hang onto. 

When we first sat down on the well used mattresses on the bed we were a bit nervous, but that bed has turned out to be amazingly comfortable. We have had two excellent nights of sleep. We are on the quieter backside of the building, so with the air conditioner running on low speed for white noise we haven’t had to use our earplugs! Amazing! 

I think we are going to be very happy here. The weather has been perfect for us, highs of +27C both days and not forecast to go up more than a couple of degrees for the rest of this week: a happy introduction to N.Y.C. in the summer. The A/C units in our suite will make any hotter days bearable. 

Tomorrow afternoon we hope to start touring some of the sights of interest within walking distance: the Morgan, the Frick and the New York City PublicLibrary art collections, the U.N. building and a revisit to Grand Central Station to take a better look at the amazing art that is on the high walls and ceiling in the huge lobby.

Walking to the kids’ apartment is just over a mile of good exercise for us and there is a bus to catch two blocks from our suite that drops us off one block from them. Our son presented us with two fully loaded Omni transportation cards to use for bus and subway fares, so we are well taken care of as we find our way farther afield in the coming weeks. We are off to a good start, walking further and more frequently in the past two days than I have since before my hip surgery last year. It feels GOOD! And for some reason I just lost my chosen font size. Sorry ya’all…..

Nip ‘n’ Tuck!

 Weeeelll, we made it but it wasn’t easy. Hahaha…..

We were proud of ourselves for getting to bed early, lights out at 9pm, the night before we left. My husband opted to sleep in the quietness of the basement to avoid the usual Friday night noise coming from the parking lot. He had a lovely six hour sleep. I started off the same way, instantly falling into a deep sleep. Then just after 11pm an overly excited friend texted his greetings to us for a happy trip. Of course this would happen the one night I forgot to shut off my mobile phone, haha. So after my initial two hours of sleep, that was it for me. At least I had no trouble getting up at 3am to get dressed and grab some milk and yogurt before the taxi arrived at 3:30am. 

We straggled off to the airport and spent the hour wait to board by eating the small breakfasts we’d forced into our carry on bags. The flight was so full it took over half an hour to complete boarding. The on time flight was all ready to go ten minutes before take off time, the pilot introduced himself to us and we waited for take off….and we waited….and we waited….and we waited….and waited…..and waited. For nearly 50 minutes we waited, the flight stewards becoming more frustrated and angry as the minutes ticked past, at one point using very angry hand signals between themselves to communicate their disgust with the delay. 

So why was there such a long delay, you ask? I will tell you why! There was such a long delay because for that completely filled flight because there was exactly ONE baggage handler responsible for loading all that baggage into the under carriage of the plane. ONE! OOOOONNNNNEEEEE!!! Baggage! Handler!

I don’t know why that was the case, but as we sat in the plane watching the minutes passing, we realized eventually that there was no way we were going to make our connecting flight. Drat! We were going to have to find the Air Canada Desk after clearing US security and customs in Toronto and try our best to get onto a later flight into La Guardia….kind of a “good luck sister” situation. Sigh….oh well, that’s air travel life these days, but still I prayed for some kind of near miracle to get us to our original connecting flight. Aaaaaaaand, we got it!

Despite the major delay and the short turn around time we had to start with, we landed exactly 15 minutes late instead of 50 minutes late! The older gentleman sitting beside me was turning white as we entered the final phase of our descent into Toronto. I thought he was ill, but when the plane came to a stop on the runway, the dear man explained his former position with the airline and why he’d experienced a white knuckle landing: “Did you realize how fast this plane was still travelling when we got to the edge of the runway apron? Did you realize the pilot got permission to miss the entire taxiing process and hit the final stretch of runway at top speed, and bring our plane to a halt right at the end of the runway, only feet from going off that end? Did you realize that is why we came to a dead, neck jolting stop and then turned sharply back into our deplaning cubicle at the terminal??” Hmmmm….no,I had not realized any of those things! Bless our dear pilots for all their skills in fast flying and not getting us all killed! 

We were seated immediately behind the posh class so were off the plane on record time, completely ignoring members of a famous band who were exiting posh class just ahead of us, as we realized there might still be a faint hope of reaching our connecting flight in time. Of course it was miles to the U.S. portion of the terminal, we thought we had to take the elevator up to the next floor where all the international flights were departing from, missing the fact that there was an escalator tucked around the side of the elevator, therefore panicking when the elevator doors remained firmly closed at the floor we wanted, and before it deposited us back to the same floor we started from, wasting more valuable time! We finally found the escalator, then raced…and I use that term loosely for two folk in their 70’s, one limping along with a cane and the other hobbled by having to carry both extremely full, heavy carry on bags all by himself. 

It was another long journey to U. S. aviation security, but fortunately for us there were few people going through, so we were done there in two minutes despite my leg hardware setting off all the bells and whistles during my security scan and us losing more time while I had a secondary scan. Thankfully the scan revealed the hardware to be the issue and away we went again, covering a lot more territory to get the Customs. Here is where taking time to download the Customs app on my husband’s phone paid off. We had already answered the Customs declaration online and submitted as much as was allowed prior to arriving at the Toronto airport. We had to open the app again there to finish the next steps. Those included answering one more online question and taking a selfie of each of us on my husband’s phone, then submitting them. That is how we filled the time when we were in the elevator going up and down on our way to airport security! hahaha 

When we got to U.S. Customs and Immigration the line up was so short that we waited less than a minute before being beckoned by an agent. He took our passports, plugged them into his system, asked us one question, took another photo of each of us, told jokes, thanked us for using the app questionnaire and we were on our way for another long dash to our departure gate to NYC. We were still fairly certain we had missed the flight, but NO. When we arrived at the gate boarding was just coming to an end and we were able to get on the plane!! Thank you God and our prayer warriors. We made it! How grateful we are! 

When we arrived at La Guardia, after a delightful hour in flight playing peek-a-boo and winky eye with one year old Ben in the row of seats ahead of us, we began racing once again, as was becoming our habit, through the terminal…go up, go way up, go back down, go way back down…to the taxi access area. Just as we were about to go through the “Exit! No Re-entry” doors to the taxis, my husband ground to a halt. He reminded me how long it had been since we had eaten and how long it would likely be before having dinner with our kids. Wisely we took a short backtrack to a Brooklyn Diner outlet for a quick and tasty burger where the idea is to use the mobile phone to access the menu, order and immediately pay online. Fortunately our server, hired for her efficiency and thick Brooklyn accent, was able to help us, her “dear sweet people”, when…..as you will no doubt be SHOCKED to know….neither of our mobile phones worked as required, hahahaha….this latest technical glitch was immediately followed by my U.S. credit card being declined when we tried to pay our taxi driver upon our arrival at our accommodation and the discovery that we would have to “reprogramme” both my husband’s lap top and my iPad in order to get internet access at the hotel….but those are stories for another post, along with the happiness of seeing our kids for the first time in over a year!