Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

 So yeah, let's start here:  With some frequency, my mother would ask, did you see my email?  And I would say, nope, I did not.  And my mother would look down her nose and roll her eyes. Oh you young people with all your texting who don't know how the email works. She was so impatient.  For my part, idk, being not actually a young person but a Gen X'er extremely familiar with how the email works, I have managed to collect probably five email addresses over the years. So I just assumed the missing email went to one of my defunct yahoo accounts or something. Besides, Tom always was cc:ed so if it was anything important, he had the deets. If you're quick like this, you might be able to see where this is heading, but let me give you a couple other clues.  My father sent out in quick succession, the following two emails: This email came through without any explanation from my father. Just a big photo. That's my parents heads btw. Pop's into the photographic arts...

No one wanted it.         Two half used bottles of hair gloss. Went in a hot minute. Very old but maybe never used make up brushes. Added some half used hair chalk from Etsy and bam. Picked up within hours. Ten people wanted these authentic vintage 1980s sunglasses No one wanted this cute moose. Are you kidding me? It's adorable!   Super hot item alert. 6 giant very old candles. Gone in ten minutes.       No one wanted these brown paint samples. Look, originally I wouldn't have been surprised, but then someone else gave away paint samples so now I'm annoyed that no one wanted mine!   Oooh, these 1950s high heels were a quick hit! Also a hit! Gone in a matter of hours. Someone said they only wanted to Kermit and none of the other knock off beanie babies, or the weird stuffed hotdog. All of a sudden I decided I want to keep the Kermit. So. Stalemate.

We were up in the small town of Hudson for the weekend with Matt and Helen and there was a suggestion to go to a parade. I am always up for a parade.  This parade was, I'm going to say, sparsely spectated. It was like the four of us and ten locals standing on a corner just ahead of the appointed hour. We could hear a little music, but the parade still appeared to be a long ways off. Then someone sees this: it's a bear casually using the crosswalk   We all thought this was really funny. Just some rando bear strolling down main street mid-afternoon. "What?" An old guy we didn't know chuckles, "A BEAR on the street? Whoever heard of such a thing!" Me and my crew all kinda looked at each other because. Yeah. We'd all seen many many bear s on the street. In the other world known as downtown New York City, a bear is a furry, usually not slender gent of a certain orientation. You can always tell it's Bear Week when there's lots of them in leather to...

  NYC sidewalks : Not like suburban side walks. I was on a work Zoom the other day with a woman from somewhere in the woods in Washington state and this other woman from suburban Virginia.  One of them started talking, I can't remember why, about some study she had seen about how women usually make way for men and step aside when encountering them on the sidewalk. Then the other one said something about another study showing that if one group is headed toward another group, the smaller group will always make way for the larger. I was thinking, oh, I am very qualified to weigh in here. Like, excessively qualified. This is most every day of my life, playing the sidewalk game.  Not to brag or anything, but I'm extremely skilled at this game. Some days I play harder than others, but yeah. Like, if I'm in a mood and a finance bro in a puffy vest is headed directly down the middle of the sidewalk staring at his phone and mowing down old ladies... you bet your ass he's gonna g...

 We were at a restaurant the other day. When we sat down at the table, our silverware was wrapped in a nice cloth napkin, so I put the napkin on my lap.  Silverware wrapped up in a napkin. After the salad, they cleared away all the dishes and also the silverware. Because our waiter was good like this, he brought over some more silverware, also wrapped in a napkin. I tossed the second napkin on my lap, forgetting I already had a napkin on my lap. Fast forward and when we get up to leave, I put my napkin on the table, stand up, and a napkin falls on the floor.  !!!!!!!! WHAT just happened? I check the table, yup. There's my napkin. I look on the floor, there's my napkin. It would have been hella confusing even without the martini.

 I was texting with Cora and told her Tom had been working on some stuff all morning. She asked what he was doing, because you know. Everyone is curious how a retired guy spends his days. Tom trying to take a photo of a mirror without being in the mirror. Tom had seen a sub-reddit of #Fails to this end, and thought he'd give it a go himself.  I'm not sure if he's going to continue to plug away at this, or if he's thrown in the towel.

 So this whole thing started when Maria sent an urgent text from Stockholm. She said I simply must go see Tango in the Dark, featuring tango dancers from Buenos Aires. They were coming to the Joyce Theater up the block from us. She had seen them in London and the audience was standing on their seats at the end.  Maria fires a flare into the air. Tango in the house! tbh, I had no intention of going to see this show. First of all, I got confused and thought it was already over. Second of all. There is no second of all, I thought I'd missed the show. Then I randomly walked by the Joyce, read the marquee, and realized I was mistaken. I had not missed Tango After Dark. It was currently playing.  I went online and all the shows were sold out. So back to square one, I had missed the show.  But then I noticed a Saturday matinee. With 1 (one!) ticket remaining.  I know! This blog post is pure adrenaline-fueled ups and downs! I wasn't going, I am going, I can't go after a...

 OK so I did march right into the men's bathroom and mentioned this to Bruce while we were texting about important other things and thus I was distracted:

We drove up to Garnet Hill Lodge Friday night and woke up to this view:  View from our room at Garnet Hill Lodge Of course I immediately connected the dots to Casper David Friedrich . I know, I'm quick like this: Right?! Striking similarities except i was not wearing a green velvet traveling suit. Or standing upon a rock. We used to go skiing *a lot.* Like every weekend. For years. So lately, at the beginning of every trip when it's been maybe a year since the last time I had skis on my feet... I have this moment where my head is, LETS DO IT! And my body is thinking, hmmm, it's been awhile.... maybe be sensible about this, old lady. Thus, there's decisions that are surprisingly difficult: hmmm, which way to go? I remember being up at Garnet Hill with my brother and Tom years ago and going up and down Skull Buster. Up and down, over and over. Hooting and giggling and let me tell you why: Until this trip, I woulda swore Skull Buster was called "Skull Crusher." I...

So this whole conversation started maybe years ago, during the pandemic early days when Tom and I took an art appreciation class from Great Courses . We loved this class. I learned all about the Romantics and that might be when Casper David Friedrich first came up in one of my conversations with Bruce. He loves this one painting: the main favorite painting Bruce loves by Casper David Friedrich - a Romantic. It is pretty great, yeah. I have been texted this painting a minimum of eight times by Bruce because it is surprisingly relevant in a wide variety of text strings. So natch, as soon as the Met catalog came in the mail, I was on it like white on rice. I texted Bruce immediately. WHAT?! CASPER DAVID FRIEDRICH is at the MET! I said, OMG we have to make a plan right now! Maybe opening day? Bruce was like OMG absolutely not. Because: opening day was on a Saturday and last time Bruce and I went to the Met on a Saturday, there was a line snaking down 5th Avenue past the entrance to the par...

 In the morning, at the crack of 11:15, I got my life together and hustled downtown to meet up with 3/4 of the book club. Danielle's oldest friend Jess had planned a city-wide scavenger hunt as a birthday surprise. At first I thought it was a normal scavenger hunt where everybody hunted around the city for clues laid by some professional party planner.  No, this was not that. We were not to be the hunters... but the hunted. Yeah, so Jess told the lot of us that we needed to come up with a location for Danielle to find us at, and then a clue to get her there. She said the clue didn't have to rhyme.  I immediately hooked up with the rest of the bookclub and suggested we work as a team because this felt like a series of tasks requiring skills I do not possess. We broke down the labor as follows: Audrey put our clue on this adorable card: Can you even imagine a cuter clue? Casey set up the location. She had cupcakes and candles and a trail of cute poofy flowers leading Daniel...