In the bedroom cleaning and listening to NPR on the radio, going through old papers and magazines and filling clear plastic bags with recycling. Doctors Without Borders is mentioned and I realize I recognize the voice, the husband of a mommy-I-know from the playground, playgroup and school, the father of one of my kid’s friends. We live in New York.
This morning I took the Kid to church, we ended up not sitting through Mass but instead going upstairs to the classroom where my Kid’s First Eucharist teacher and a teenage assistant were helping kids to create hats for the Philip Neri Picnic. Apparently he was quite a joker, as one of the priests said, explaining how he created a picture of the saint winking. The kids put cutouts of Phillip Neri on cut paper plates and added ribbons and marker drawings and words. What they made looked like a cross between a Bishops hat and Minnie Pearl’s Easter bonnet. Whatever. There was a funny hat competition at the picnic.
At the picnic my kid and her friend ordered “off the menu” getting hot dogs without buns. They rode the pony twice and had their faces painted. My kid was a bunny. Her friend asked for a venus fly-trap. “That lady didn’t even know what a venus flytrap was!” This kid’s face was painted with something that looked to me like a purple poinsettia.
Walking home from St. Boniface we passed the afore mentioned “famous” father with his wife and kids. They were on the way to the train and asked if we’d been to a different neighborhood family’s birthday party, because of the painted face and ribbon covered craft in my hand (the Philip Neri hat). They were on their way to New Jersey to see friends. We have our own friends in New Jersey to see this week if it works out– a former co-worker of my Husband. They’re not in the area long, just a stop along the pilgrimage from India to Disneyworld
I was disappointed that my kid did not want to go see the STREB SLAM show in Williamsburg. That was the afternoon plan I had in mind. I miss going to STREB once a week for her to take her classes with the fabulous Fabio. When My Kid got on the FirstLEGO robotics team STREB went out the window. Also My Kid didn’t like the commute. But STREB was an important part of our lives from her first class when she was 3-years-old. There was a fantasy–what kind of cool modern dancers would these kids who started at STREB at 3 would be as teenagers. (check out my husband’s blog for his pride over my baby raising her geek flag.) Sigh.
There is a clownlab I could go to tonight. I don’t know if I will be able to make it up to midtown by 7pm. My husband and kid haven’t eaten. That’s important. The kid hasn’t done her homework yet. AND we are still cleaning and getting rid of stuff. The husband is amazed by how much paper there is to go through, paper, mail, bills, un-read books and magazines since his job situation went into transition. The transition, still not over, has been going on now for 8 months! We are worn out.
So nobody (meaning me) planned dinner and we went to Sushi D (the Kid’s favorite neighborhood restaurant) AGAIN!
Now we’re home. The husband is shredding again (working in the computer industry as he does, he has a healthy lack of faith and insists on shredding anything that has any of our names and a code number on it– which is pretty much every piece of mail that comes into our home)
Going through a box of old magazines–I forgot that I subscribed to “IN THESE TIMES” out of spite after George Bush II was re-elected. God, I remember the afternoon I spent sitting at the bar at the Cowgirl Bar and Grill on Hudson, when My Kid was in Pre-K at PS-3 in Greenwich Village, watching the election returns with tears running down my cheeks. The bartender gave me a free beer.
Real Estate is on my mind. The potluck First Eucharist event last night was at the home of a family of four that has a whole brownstone all to themselves. At the picnic today I overheard one of the priests telling some people that the two white clapboard houses next to the church AND the two brownstones on the block don’t belong to the chuch but belong to him (Bruce Ratner???) “He loves them. He brought them here from other locations.” (Bruce Ratner’s cabinet of curiosities–4 unoccupied houses on Duffield Street) OK I can’t even process that right now…