Mother Christmas

Not much to say.

My day was filled with my last day at work for the semester, and then, immediately, child care.

Not that I'm not grateful to be able to do those things, especially the child care.  Especially in light of Newtown.

But I was pulled from a warm coffee shop where I was about to order a cafe latte and then sit down with it and write with it, only to then stand alone in a cold park, shivering and waiting, for 45 minutes.
Going out to dinner and holiday window watching was also canceled.  Which is JUST FINE!  See how mature I am?

So I had to cobble together an eat-at-home dinner.  I diced one onion and two sad looking sweet potatoes and made home fries, threw in some kale.  Fried some eggs.  That was dinner.

Then I took everything off the cluttered table and scrubbed the table, and only put about half of the stuff back on.  Threw out some cards from Xmas '10 and '11.  Maybe even '09.

During this, the child who had needed care earlier fell asleep--a rare spontaneous nap.  When she woke, she thought it was the next day, 7:00 am.  "I need breakfast," she said.  She got it.

How Far Would You Walk for a Hot Meal?

My first post-Sandy post. 

I'm very tired.

Our path to civilization

I kept a journal every day.

A flashlight was a necessity.  I didn't leave the apt without it.

What I'll remember is the cold.  Cold apartment, cold water, cold electric stove.

Warm refrigerator.

How far would you walk for a hot meal?  Yesterday, I walked about a mile-and-a-half over a bridge into Brooklyn, bringing my daughter with me.  We brought our dead phones and chargers with us.  I couldn't find my other daughter until I charged my phone. 

Communication in our neighborhood was reduced to notes taped up on doors, dropping by apartment buildings and yelling up at windows, hoping to catch someone home.

In the Brooklyn restaurant we eventually ended up at, my kid asked if she could order steak and eggs.  "Of course!" I said.  And then I jubilantly ordered hot tea AND hot coffee and a kale Ceasar salad with homemade croutans, an egg sandwich with homefries.  We gave our phones and charger to our very sweet waiter who ran out and bought a power strip.

Every day without power I thought about food.  How I could get it and where.  How I would bring it back before sundown, before my neighborhood would go epically, Biblically dark. 

Tight place update:

To add insult to injury, someone got a hold of our banking info and swiped some money from our account last night.  Sigh.

Cakeshop's Tight Place

Doughnut benches at the Doughnut Plant

 I started the day at the DP writing morning pages.  You can see I'm wearing a polka dot dress AGAIN!  And I picked up a free copy of Edible Manhattan.

Shopping cart art!

 On the way, home I passed this artfully augmented shopping cart.  It's like Olek revised, or alternate-universe Olek--a yarning of the empty spaces the shopping cart makes instead of yarning the object itself.  Negative space, valued and defined.  Okay, I'll shut up now.

Where else am I going to see ELO covers?

 Later, I ended up at Cakeshop, which is in a super tight place and hopefully they'll be able to get out of it!  (By the way, Lara and I discussed our respective cake fetishes today, which interests me greatly now as it's my birthday month.)  Re, Cakeshop, however, you should watch this:


I do what I can for Cakeshop.   It's still one of my favorite places to write.

I also love Cakeshops broke down furniture.