Momomama
A prediction made by many a bartender, liquor store clerk and cigarette salesperson has come true. "One day, you'll be glad that you look so young! You'll be flattered that someone thinks you are under 21!" Today, friends, I was hit on by the cutest twenty year old you ever did see. And when I said, "I don't want to presumptous or anything, but I think I'm, like, a lot older then you..." He said, "Oh! Well, you assumed right anyway." Very cute.
There must be a word for the feeling you get when you see someone do something really embarrassing - like belting a Christmas song, out of tune, in formalwear and all seriousness, to a crowd of people who are completely unimpressed by your performance, your fake eyelashes or your floor show co-stars. Especially if you have that feeling on a docked, yet still rolling, cruise boat, after two glasses of wine and some lukewarm egg rolls appetizers.
I's a real antsy pants today. Probably because I want to get through this Week of Things I Don't Want to Do and onto the Whole Week I Have Off for Thanksgiving.
Hopefully there will be snow up North next week, so's I can use my snowshoes and skis.
Yesterday I looked at condos with my mom (and she put in an offer on one and it was accepted, go Mom!) In one complex we saw two identical places. The first was empty; foreclosed. The next was incredibly messy. It looked like the owners had vanished mid-activity. In the bathroom, there was a window, waiting to be installed in some other home. and a pile of girlie mags on the back of the toilet. The owners have a small child. When we were on the way out I recognized a woman in a collage of family photos. She kept turning up, and was obviously very closely related to the owner. I knew her in high school. I thought. "It must be her sister's place." But when I got home, and looked her up in an old yearbook, I realized she didn't have a sister and that it had to be her place. You can't really know anything about someone just by looking at them.
I went home to walk Mo and when I parked the car, the leaves were blowing straight down my street at 40 miles an hour, twenty abreast. There was no stopping those leaves and looking at them gave me the feeling I get when I am driving North on 1st Avenue late at night and all the lights are green for sixty blocks. Traffic moves as one. When we catch up to the red lights we all slow, to maintain the rhythm of the lights. I never love New York City so much as when I am driving straight down an avenue.
Oh the winds. I love this weather - how the leaves are whipping thourgh the air, and everyone's hair is flying around, and forecasts of flurries.
My macaroni and cheese is not the cheesiest. But it's home-made.
All week I have been thinking about Thanksgiving, and about how fun it will be. My dad, Bill's mom and Bill's accountant will be joining us for dinner. I met Bill's accountant once, and he looks like a middle aged man named Bruce who lives with his mom in a small bungalow just to the right of their Motel. Which he is. Bruce lets the local kids, even the troublemakers, swim in the motel pool when there are no guests. He told Bill that he's handy in the kitchen and Bill told him to come on down for dinner on the 27th. I have been spending all my free time thinking about menus and pumpkin pies and cranberry and ginger sauce and roasted brussel sprouts with almonds and honey. It's going take some effort to transform the Bunkhouse kitchen into a lovely setting for an elegant meal, but I have faith in candles and a centerpiece or two and a really long tablecloth. I'm already thinking about what I am going to have to pack up and bring in the car in order to put this on....food processor, serving bowls, stemware, candlesticks.
So tell me, what food makes it thanksgiving for you?
Last night, after her show,
Alana and I went out for a drink in Brooklyn. All I know of Park Slope is 5th Avenue, but we were on 7th, and frankly, too lazy to try elsewhere. So we took a step inside Snooky's and onto what seemed to be the set of a David Lynch movie. There was a lady in stilettos in a fedora, a drunken date in a suit and a juke box that kept repeating that damn Cheryl Crow/Kid Rock duet. The lady in the fedora was very effusive and very Brooklyn in that way Fran Drescher in the Nanny was she teetered around the bar. Once, she looked at at Alana and said..."I know I look like Peggy Bundy tonight." She did, more or less.
It's not the first time Alana and I have ended up a bar that had us agog. There was that night in Rome when we wanted to go to a gay bar, and ended up at
Hangar. If the listing in Let's Go had mentioned leather, like the web listing I found for it does, we might not have gone. We found the bar after wandering through cobbled Roman back streets. When we got to the door, the American owner was working it (the door, that is, but he was also
working it.) He kept saying, "You know this is a gay bar, right?" Over and over. Once we became "members", we went inside and ordered drinks and sat quietly on a bench under an airbrushed pictures of an airplane. We were the only women.
But at least we knew what was going on....last night we could not follow. Not at all.
Over 200 million served.
Damn. This makes the fundraiser in me get all hot and bothered. And the dieter in me says, "let's get a chocolate shake and fries to celebrate!"
I forgot to vote. After all the promises to do so I made to the Westchester Democratic Committee, to Alana, to God, and to the lady in front of the grocery store who was stumping for some guy for judge. After all that I just drove right on home. I didn't remember that i had forgotten until I walked Mo past my OLD polling place, the school across the street from me (the new one is one whole mile away!), and all the lights were on in the gym. By then it was 9:30 and too late to fulfill my duty as a citizen.
Overheard (spoken by the student worker from the office upstairs as he stands at the photocopier):
You have to be POSITIVE! POSITIVE! It pays to be POSITIVE (sounds of copy machine) POSITIVE! (sounds stop) Oh, crap.
