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

My Grammy brought over a very old box filled up with everything I'd ever given her. And I was a high-output factory of creative abundance. The first thing I would like to spotlight from the box are the following 4"x4" square pieces of paper. Each paper features a unique design. There are ten total. I have a vague recollection of hawking the lot for five cents a piece. Grammy was my best customer. Mrs. Howard, our babysitter, refused to purchase anything despite scorchingly persistent salesmanship.

Grammy R explains diaper maintenance, circa 1945: Step 1: Scrape poop from dirty diaper into toilet. Step 2: Throw diaper into a pail of water and deoderizer. Step 3: After pail fills up, scrub diapers in bathtub using washboard. Step 4: Put scrubbed diapers into large pot on stove. Step 5: Bring to a boil. Step 6: Hang diapers on clothes line to dry. Repeat bi-weekly for approximately 3 years. technorati tags: Parenting , Diapers , Baby , History

Don't forget, "That which does not kill you makes you stronger, Butterfly."

Sethie was probably six or seven years old when he lined up with Dad for the start of his first 5k fun run. Ready. Set. Bang . Hundreds of pounding sneakers burst onto the open road. A kid flashed by and Sethie turned on the giddyup. Tried to keep up with him. Dad-san trotted up alongside Sethie. He lay his hand on the Nutchie's shoulder and said, "Slow down. Pace yourself. You'll catch that kid soon enough." And he did. technorati tags: Fun Run , Road Race , Running , Exercise

I didn't realize the cute top I unearthed in Century 21 cost $356 until I was already in the dressing room and noticed the Miu Miu tres fancy price tag. Immediately, I began to hyperventilate from sticker shock. And also because the top's death grip on my middle-lung aviolis made breathing a slim possibility. Good things started to happen when I noticed a sale sticker. Fifty percent off. I found another one. Fifty percent off again. Then there was a smallish green dot. Because I'm quick like this even through a haze of oxygen deprivation, I know a big sale price-slashing dot when I see it. In the end, the shirt cost $15. I would have gasped with glee had I been able to intake air. I decided to wear my new Miu Miu top to David's surprise birthday party. In preparation, I inserted a contingency shirt into a hermetically sealed zip-lock baggie. I stowed the baggie in my handbag. I informed my friend Lynn, who is trustworthy when faced with medical crises, that should I be...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Andrew wrote (and cc:ed a lot of people): So I have been here in Austin for a straight week, stuck in training from 8 - 6 every day... This morning in the company cafeteria, as I waited for my breakfast burrito, Bryan Adams was playing in the background. Now THAT is cool all on it's own. Then the song ends and ANOTHER Bryan Adams song comes on. That's when I realize, they are not just playing some 80's mix, they are rockin' the entire album at 7:30 AM. If I can get Metallica played during lunch I am moving down here. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Reply All: I KNOW! I was so psyched to come into work today and rock out to the entire Loverboy album on back-to-back play. I don’t know why Bryan Adams’ old sock went for a grand on eBay when those red leather gonorrific ass cheek pants didn’t even get a bid. If I can lock down some Men at Work over lunch I’ll go work at your compan...

Diane and Ken have a neighbor remarkably free from the ravages of caring about anybody else but herself. She is raising a fifth grader. Meaning, this perversion has been going on for at least five years: Every school day morning, Mom auto-starts her SUV so it has fifteen minutes to warm up to toasty. She and junior get into the car. They drive down the driveway. They idle by the mailbox until the bus comes. Mom does a K-turn and motors back up to the house. Let's do the math. An idling car emits 20 times the air pollution of one traveling 30mph. So this lazy ass has produced over 1000 pounds of air pollution so far to commemorate her son's academic career. She has undoubtedly beavered a hole in the ozone layer bigger than the Yankees' payroll. But here is the demented irony: Children are particularly vulnerable to air pollution because they breathe faster than adults and inhale more air per pound of b...

From the bottom of the black hole called the Great Depression, in the steamy depths of New York City, my grammy's mom had twenty-five cents to feed her family. It wasn't looking good. Then she found a dollar underneath the elevator shaft. She went to the Bronx Market and bought a mouthwatering chicken.

My pile is always hot. In years past, despite my God-given talent in the area of composting, marauding bastard-ass aphids and their Aryan white fly comrades strangled my tomatoes in their locust death grip. Ghastly stringy leafless carnage littered my garden. This year, I called in mercenaries. I hired a smallish plastic pouch of bloodthirsty warriors with experience in theatres of war like the FlowerHouse. I'm talking about Green Lace Wings. Putting an end to chicanery and fruit looting. My boys are downhome ferocious kungfu fighters, even when they're just little baby larvae. Their tiny mandibles chomp up any squishy body encountered. Take that, Bug Nemeses! Check it: I might commission a parade. Hoist all the Lace Wings up on a microscopic float and trottle around the cul de sac. technorati tags: tomatoes , gardening , green lace wings , insect pests , aphids , white flies , greenhouse

Tom, driving by Volunteer Park: “What a great arm on that kid. He fired the ball from left field all the way to home plate.” "Whoa. Hold on a second here. That’s no kid. It’s a midget. They’re all midgets. It’s Midget League.” “I mean Little League.” “I mean Little People League.” technorati tags: Midgets , Baseball ,

The legend says if Prague wants you, she will call to you. Either she didn't want me, or I had a hard time hearing her. Her soul is buried under the deadweight of a million tourists. I forged the squashed streets like a salmon against the current, nerfed between loudtalking man-night-outers, half of Japan, and legions of hausfraus relentlessly price shopping oddly creepy marionettes. But maybe not much has changed. Prague was built with the money of foreign rulers: Holy Roman Emperors, Nazis, Soviets. In the past thousand years, there's barely been five decades in a row where the Czechs have been in charge. Yet ten centuries of architectural wonderworks piled on top of each other is tough to overlook. You've got your rigged out medieval cathedral kicking a Bolshevik concrete bunker jammed up against some tres fancy art nouveau bauble. The overall effect is breathtaking. Everyone says so. But not so long ago, in the abject communist 80's, only gypsies possessed the swa...

My husband Tom and I have toted our Rick Steves all around Europe. We love him. His pages are dog-eared and scribbled on and reread. One time, in a moment teetering on tragic, we nearly left Rick on a German bus. Luckily Tom accelerates under pressure and although the incident left us pale and shaken, we were reunited with our trusty friend. I can’t say enough about German/Austrian Rick, London Rick, Paris Rick, or Italy Rick. But in Prague, we got a little hitch in our giddyup. I find it hard to say out loud, but we had a squabble, Rick, Tom and I. First he left us hanging on his orientation tour on the tram. We didn’t realize the route wasn’t circular and we ended up in the suburbs. It’s ok, we travel low to the ground, we figured out that the trams don’t pick up where they let out and managed to get back into town. It’s just that Rick is usually so thoughtful and careful with his directions. Unfortunately, not so much in the Czech Republic. There are only shadows of his signature wa...

Aha! I'm seeing the reason for the evident weightgain across the pond: XXXL Wangers. Devastating to diets in all languages.

You used to be able to pick out the Americans in any crowd: Jiggling a little chub Wearing comfortable shoes Loud talking Rigged out in T-shirts featuring English words spelled correctly and clustered into phrases that actually make sense Contemporaneously, indicators 1 & 2, not so much as telltale signs. Fat Europeans abound and they have discovered that double-D width sneakers and padded socks properly underpin the extra poundage. Gone are the days when Tom and I were the only ones taking on a six mile path up a mountain to some castle in sensible shoes while everybody else hauled ass in strappy sandles. Blessed be for indicator 3. And 4. Holy truths even in these dubious times. You can hear we Americans coming across courtyards of cobblestones, our voices ringing above all others as we point out how unexpectedly short kings generally are, and how Joan Crawford and Yoko Ono share a lot in common. And for sure, we are not wearing T-shirts revealing hard facts like: "If you c...

The internet is not as good as the beer, comrades. Catch you on the flipside of the week. Na shledanou.

Tom and I travel to the cursed depths of Manhatten for a Tuesday night show at Webster Hall. Steel Train Opening band Steel Train consists of five dudes from Mr. Kotter's class. Their conjoined earnestness oozes from their pores and permeates the room with the faint odor Gabe Kaplan's encouragement. Tom says they are "tight." I say one day, when moldy rockstar grime has smothered their dilligent fascination with their instruments, then, maybe, they will become intriguing enough for big-eyed girls with knapsacks to chase around. Musically, Steel Train's songs contain an average of three notes, which the gaggling supersilious guitar player standing behind us repeatedly points out while he glances around to see if anyone has overheard how totally boss he is. I teeter on mentioning that this is probably why Tom Petty never really achieved much attention. Piebald The guys in Piebald know what piebald means and they chuckle backstage at all the morons who are not clued ...

Me: "Why is there a whole lot of potato salad in the refrigerator?" Tom: "Because a company of Dutchmen is coming over."

Raccoons have thumbs which enable them to open many closed containers (such as garbage cans and doors ). Their intelligence and dexterity equip them to survive in a wide range of environments. The densest population o f raccoons in New York is in New York City." Yeah but we already knew that. See the Raccoon Chronicles . This is a new chapter. What do you call a Catdoor with no door....? Our Catdoor. Twenty pounds of ravenous fur ripped it off a long time ago. Raccoons have substantial hand strength. So, our Cat Pass-Through is located in a basement window. After the raccoons began their nightly fandangos, we corked up said window. We spent our free time sketching scale drawings of mechanical fortifications that would feature the following must-haves: Tensile strength robust enough to withstand raccoon metacarpus. Blockage against nocturnal nemeses, but not against the cat. No requirement for anything to be strapped on or about Alex, Cat Houdini. For a year, I tinkered with m...

Unaware of the tragedy to follow, I laced up my rollerskates and waited for Tom to concoct a perfectly proportioned electrolyte mix. Fifteen miles is a long way to run, which is why I decided he required wheeled accompaniment. Rounding a corner by the man-made beach, I got clotheslined by a canoe. In the back of a parked pickup truck. Flew right underneath and skidded down the path on my tushy. It was really very acrobatic, but I did not stick the landing. Luckily, there was a lifeguard competition going on and the beach was packed with their loyal fans. Who all turned around when the canoe took me out. Because of the loud bang. If you're going to careen down a path on your ass, you might as well have spectators is all I'm saying.

Never have I seen such artistry. Heartwarming whippery that'll fix you right up. My Joe frothed the hitch out of my giddyup and I was good for twenty more blocks. Joe's Coffee Manhattan/West Village 141 Waverly Pl New York, NY 10003 The Art of Joe