Month: December 2008

I just opened my “At-A-Glance” appointment book, (I still use an appointment book) and I’ve got a week full of lunches, dinners and parties.   What does next week look like??  Less crowded. Three parties. I hope I have enough outfits to cover all these events.  Who am I kidding??  I’ll wear my nice jeans, and dress up whatever shirt I wear with a pretty necklace and I’m good to go.

I should be okay.  Tim Gunn is not expected anywhere I’m going to be.  I’d document my outfits, but I’ve never figured out how to get decent self-portraits with these point and shoots. I’ll try.

And here is, yes, yet another cat shot.  What can I say?  They are always there and very cute (to me). 

I felt so awful yesterday morning, I’m not sure what it was about exactly. I think a combination of the holidays, “women’s” stuff [details omitted to spare fragile male readers, but really, you guys should thank the universe every day, and speaking of which, it’s just not fair, please tell me you’re going through some male equivalent of this, and I’m speaking to the men of a certain age here].  I had to make myself shower, run errands, etc.

But then there was our second choir performance.  Both performances were sold out!

Here’s from the altar, before they opened the doors.

Singing is pretty much a never-fail mood elevator.  And nice friends were there (and I had family and friends there the night before).  So, I was feeling good again when I headed out to Long Island.  Here’s the thing about Long Island, where I grew up.  

First, being on the Long Island Railroad always fills me with complete and utter despair.  I think the only person who might understand this is my friend Chris Hegarty.  We used to sneak into the city every chance we got growing up, where we’d invariably get into some little bit of trouble, then we’d miss the train home and have to spend time in the most depressing place in New York (Penn Station) at the worst hour of the night, waiting for the next train, which was always hours later.  Plus, we were going home which just added to the misery.  All I wanted was to live in New York City and having to head back out to Long Island just made me sad.  (No offense to Long Island, especially where I grew up which is very pretty.)

Then, for some reason, just being on the train makes me more than ever aware of the passage of time.  I sit and watch towns and stations going by that I have watched go by for decades, and I remember looking out these windows when I was five years old, then as an adolescent, then a teenager, a college girl, etc.  Same towns, same buildings, same cemeteries, lots of crumbling, some growth. And I can’t help but be aware that in the not too distant future these trains will continue chugging along long after I am gone.  Then I think about the people who are, in fact, gone.

Lovely, right?  But I had a fantastic time at my sister-in-law Karen’s birthday party!!  (Karen, you looked great by the way, I meant to say.  That was a good shirt for you, both color and style.)  Man did my brothers marry great women and have great kids.  I so lucked out.  Speaking of which, my father’s second wife Arlene (both my parents had great second marriages) is also fantastic.  

I had such a fun time re-living the joy of Obama’s election with one of my nephews and with my stepmother’s sister.  We kept smiling and smiling and going over all the details, just relishing and sharing our hope for the future. This was my nephew’s first election.  Can you imagine?  Then I had the enormous pleasure of learning that one of my relatives, who I believe has always voted republican, voted for Obama (don’t want to say who because I don’t know how he feels about making such a thing public).  I just kept hugging him.  As he went over his reasons I just kept hugging him.

Here is the board listing the departure times and tracks for the Trains of Doom.

I just found this picture. I think it’s my favorite Grace Church picture ever. I hope the photographer doesn’t mind. His name is Alex Espinoza and I found it here.

There’s another performance of our holiday concert today, so yay!  Sing choirs of angels!  Sing in exultation! (Is that blasphemous?)

Parts I like from what we’re singing:

“Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things that thine eyes have seen (and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life …”

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.”  Heed those words people who behaved shamefully this past election.  You know who you are. At least I hope you know who you are, because then there’s the possibility that you might be a better person in the future.

I was just reading a little bit from a Times article.  I think it said that people around you, who are not necessarily close to you, like your neighbors or friends of friends, can effect your mood as much as your spouse?  It seems insane, but I kinda bought it.  Yesterday I was going nuts trying to find this second gift for the New York Cares kid and I found it at a Ride Aid drugstore, of all places.  I couldn’t reach it so someone who works there got it for me, but then we couldn’t get it to work, and so she went to get someone.

Seconds later I figure it out and I go to get her.  I was so happy to have found the thing, she didn’t even know they carried it and she was happy too because she was going to get one for her kid (an electronic keyboard for children which comes with a mic, which was also on sale).  I don’t know, we both had our own reasons for being happy in that moment and the good mood was infectious. Now, that’s not news, it’s only news that they’re claiming that happiness is more contagious than we thought.  I loved this quote in the article, “Emotions have a collective existence — they are not just an individual phenomenon.” (From Harvard Medical School physician and social scientist Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, an author of the study.)  Here’s the article if you’re curious.

This picture is a still from a movie I took at the Municipal Archives the other day.  Maybe I should upload the movie.  It’s really short.

I got my child’s letter from New York Cares and just what I feared might happen is happening—I can’t find what the child wants. [Backstory: New York Cares has a program called Winter Wishes where you get a child’s letter to Santa and agree to buy the gifts.] I went all the way up to Toys R Us in Times Square, the biggest toy store I think, but no go. I got his first choice gift though, so it’s not the end of the world. I have a few places to try this afternoon.

Here’s a picture of the scary Toys R Us monster who skulks around in the doorway.  If I was a kid I’d run screaming from this thing.  It’s like seven feet tall.  And orange.