What I Was Doing When You Were in Your Leopard-Skin Print Dress

After school, S and I attended the opening day of this new croissant cafe!  Another place to write and grade.  

L, the fact that we have only two computers (one near death) and four people is a real prob.  (Also, no TV, so one of the computers serves as that.)

So, last night--no blogging.  Today, I'll blog twice.

So, I hope you read this, L.

Last night, S and I went to Cocoa Bar for the free Internet so she could watch a show on this computer.    (Our Internet was spotty.)  I wrote in the candlelit dark in a notebook.

As I wrote, I wondered if my friends in Salt Lake City were having a good time at Dennis' art show.

Shelley and I texted back and forth.  NYC to PDX.

I also wondered what it may have been like to attend my high school reunion taking place last night in this place.  I've never been to a single reunion.  Have you?

At home, I crawled into my bed.  It had been a long week, but not the longest week I've had recently.  To rest my aching, typing hands I read:  Michael Chabon's new novel about a record store in Berkeley and Jonathan Lethem's novel about a former child stare living on residuals in NYC while his astronaut girlfriend endlessly orbits the earth.

I was not wearing a leopard-skin print dress.  I was not wearing anything worth writing about at all.

Street Theater/Little Library

I forgot that last week I actually reunioned with FIVE old friends instead of four.  Here, right here in McNally Jackson is someone I hadn't seen in well over ten years, mostly because she lives in London.   This photo and mention also serves as a sneak preview of an upcoming Guest Blogger installment.  While I was thoroughly enjoying my time with my London friend this amazing boy (see him on the far left??) strolled in while we were chatting wearing 1990 club kid white vinyl platform boots and neon orange hot pants, plus harness.  It was one of those quintessential New York moments:  just your typical Wednesday afternoon in the city.

Below you'll see that a new season of Shakespeare in the Parking Lot has commenced:  The Merry Wives of Windsor (Towers) is now playing in the municipal parking lot on Ludlow Street.  These productions feature equity actors and everything and like their flashier cousin in Central Park are absolutely free.  (Two years ago, Lara and her Utah teens attended a production.)

Lastly, after Prune, Claire and I walked up to the Standard East Village hotel to see the little Beat Literature library in one of the common areas.  It does crack me up that there are more sunglasses and eyeglass frames for sale then Beat Lit titles to peruse.  And when has Norman Mailer been considered a Beat?

In other news, I've been finishing up my online class today.  My birthday week starts tomorrow!

Inherited Narratives

A complex narrative for your legs at Wolford, which I pass on the way to work

This week for Artist's Way homework, Lara and I are supposed to examine our perception of God or god--depending how you see Him/Her or him/her, or whatever God means to you.  (The Artist's Way isn't religious, but is big time spiritual.  So if that bugs you, you might have a hard time with it.)

It was interesting writing about this today--actually, maybe for the very first time.  What I came up with was that growing up, I felt that God was withholding, that S/He rewarded other families, but not mine.  And this didn't make sense to me, because there is this thing in Mormonism, this thing that has come out with the rise of uber Ritchie Rich Romney this year, that righteousness (church attendance, tithe paying, callings, Sabbath observed, etc. etc.)  will get you blessings--yes, even temporal blessings:  good jobs, good house, good money.  So where were our blessing?  Because my parents were checking off all the righteousness boxes, like totally checking off . . . and still we struggled, to a humiliating (at least for me as a kid) degree.

Sometimes our car broke down and we--mortifyingly--walked to church.   Because you know, Lara, that no one walks to church in Arizona, even if it's two blocks.

Well into adulthood now, I think I still live in the narrative I inherited, that life is a downward trajectory, that things don't get better--only worse.  And I'm really trying hard not to live in that narrative space.  But it's hard.  

On the upside, on the way home from work, I met up with two kids who were in the BYU dorms with me Spring term of 1983.  They met each other during that small window of a term, and ended up marrying about a year later.  And 29 years later--we meet up in NYC, and they are just as delightful and interesting to talk to in the Time Warner building as they were in the Morris Center cafeteria.

Father's Day Sans Father

It's been a crazy day.  I made a seafood orzo from Moosewood for Father's Day, plus, we invited another family and made it a graduation party. 

This coming up week, I have graduations for both my kids.   I'm also trying to squeeze one last school newsletter out before classes are dismissed for the summer.  Last night, Zoe's old toddler play group reunioned for one last time before all the toddlers go off to high school (and I had to cook for that), plus, we had to clean everything today for our dinner guests, plus a house guest we are having this week.

PLUS, one of my dearest, oldest friends Robin was in town with her family all last week, and I took a couple of my "getting stuff done" days off to hang out with her.  (Such a treat treat treat for me.)

PLUS PLUS PLUS, this is the first Father's Day I've ever experienced without a father and I've been feeling like I need to phone my dad all day.  It's this anxious feeling I can't quite get rid of.  I hope he knows I've been thinking of him and missing him.  The photo above was taken about three years ago in Tempe.  He's holding my then youngest niece.  A sweet, sweet guy my dad was.

6th Avenue Tights/Hippie Maundy Thursday

The tights are textured.  6th Avenue and 43rd Street

The Hole

Fake pastoral at The Hole

Someday I will learn to blog before 11:00.

My day was:

1.  Publishing party at S's school.  Biked from there to subway to . . . 

2.  Work.

3.  Reunioned with a high school friend and her family at Les Pain Quotidien by Bryant Park.  I hadn't seen her since Reagan's first term in office.  (Had the ricotta and fig tartine.)

4.  Biked to S's school.

5.  Easter/Passover errands:

     a.  Russ and Daughter's is sold OUT of chocolate matzah.  The gal said they would make more.  But WHEN!

     b.  Crepe paper and pipe cleaners to make flowers for Easter bonnets to wear at Sunday's Easter Parade.

     c.  Bulbed flowers for Passover table.

6.  Dropped by The Hole to see the current show.

7.  Home.  Spring break starts tomorrow! 

8.  Went to nearest church in the Catholic/Episcopal (Most Holy Redeemer) to check out signs of Maundy Thursday.  There was a small gathering chanting in Spanish.

I came to Maundy Thursday in my mid-20s when I lived in Salt Lake City.  I love all night vigils, which is the Maundy Thursday tradition.  I also love the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, which my parents vigorously criticized when the film version came out in 1973.  They did not want Jesus' last week set to a rock soundtrack, even if it was by the decidedly tepid Andrew Lloyd Weber. And they certainly didn't want Jesus played by that hippie, Ted Neeley.

Here's the Maundy Thursday scene from the film: