Deliver Me From Delivery

My cooking skills are shot. I packed up fifteen cookbooks today and can't remember the last time I consulted one. Guys on bicycles delivering food to my door have ruined me. Delivery menus have become my recipe books.

My Y and I have completely different tastes in food. He loves seafood, I would eat chicken for every meal every day if I could. He enjoys cucumbers and tomatoes soaked in Italian salad dressing, I like plain celery sticks. He likes street vendor lamb kabobs, mmmm, I don't? Anyway, the point is that requesting food delivery becomes very appealing. We can both order what we want and even if we are not eating the same food at least we are still eating together. 

I already know I am going to miss this aspect of living in a big city. I've never ordered breakfast to be delivered to my door but that's not really the point is it? I COULD have breakfast delivered to my door if I wanted it. French toast, bagels, eggs over medium with a side of crispy bacon, anything that is on the menu a bicyclist will weave through traffic to bring me. It gives a little punch to breakfast in bed doesn't it?

It doesn't really matter that we aren't ordering in anything exotic. It's usually chicken pot pie, roasted chicken, pasta dishes, pizza, salads, or some variation of Chinese food. What matters is that it shows up hot and ready to eat, there are no pots and pans to wash, and if we want to really to save the planet, no dishes to wash.  In addition to anything delivered there comes a minimum of four to six packets of plastic ware (really, the servings large enough to feed that many people), fifteen packets of whatever condiment they deem appropriate, and a huge stack of thin napkins that equals one good Bounty napkin. Once you're finished eating you now have plastic leftover containers for all those meals you aren't preparing.

Chinese food and pizza are the only two types of food that will show up at my door in the smallish town where I am moving. I will know those menus by heart within two weeks of turning the key in the door of my new delivery address. Eating food from a variety of restaurants will require me to jump in the car, pull into the "Take Out Parking Only" spots, and wait for a car hop to deliver food to my window.

No, I just need to unpack those cookbooks, fire up the search engines for recipes sites, and flip through some magazines for enticing meals that include seafood and chicken.

A Cow Bell Day

Go to any type of outdoor sporting event where friends and family attend for the purpose of encouraging and inspiring their favorite participant and you will hear cow bells. Hopefully lots and lots of cow bells.

When Mr. Y participated in a 102 mile bike event that required him to ride up and down three mountain passes in one day he was happy to have a small band of supporters yelling out messages of hope and assurance all while vigorously clanging cow bells. All the other participants also seemed to enjoy that we popped up at strategic spots along the route ("You guys again!?") and would shout out their request for "More cow bells!"  Their pace would pick up, we would get smiles and a thank you, and we knew we had lifted their spirits when they needed it most.

As I cleaned out the back of my closet and came across my set of cow bells (What? You don't keep cow bells around?) I thought today might be a good day to give them a good shaking before I pack them away. Who needs an athletic event to justify a good cow bell ringing? My frowny face from yesterday has been replaced with a little bit of anticipation as I tape shut some more packing boxes, but I could still use a little uplift. I found out this morning that dear friends who participated in our little support group in the mountains will be facing surgeries over the next few weeks to address potentially serious health issues. I'm thinking a cow bell ringing video would at least divert their thoughts from what lies ahead for a few minutes. The world as a whole seems to be in a bit of a mess right now and could certainly use a good cow bell event.

While I complete my short cow bell ringing session (VERY short considering I have apartment neighbors) I leave you with a video (More Cow Bell) of the now classic SNL skit that inspired the requests for more cow bell.

That completes my Cow Bell Day.

A Different Move

I figure I might as well write this while I can. By this time next week it will be just too difficult. I'm preparing myself for the move back to the Midwest. Moves for me have always been easy, but not this one.

It seems every move until now has been more exciting than the last. I was eighteen when I moved out of my parent's home and, as with most teenagers I was excited to be on my own. Not going to college made my first move away a permanent one. I was moving to a big city (well, big to me) to take my first full time job. No moving back home for summer or winter breaks. Even though that first move was to a spare bedroom in the home of a Methodist minister and his wife (funny story for another time), I loved that big sunny corner bedroom.

Subsequent moves coincided with different life events. Moving into my first apartment with roommates, a little bungalow after getting married, a bigger house and a new baby, purchasing my first home after a divorce, a temporary apartment while building a new home with a new husband, moving into that new home thinking we would be there a long time, moving to new jobs 3 years later in a new city then upsizing 2 years after that to accommodate a blended family, and finally to downsizing here in NYC. Every time my general mood has been upbeat, excited, with a sense of adventure thrown in.

I have talked to people who are just contemplating a move and are reduced to tears talking about it. They are living in their dream home, or all their babies were brought home to that house, the pets are buried in the back yard, they have spent hours doing projects together to get it just like they want it. I couldn't understand what the emotion was all about.  I've loved my homes, spent hours decorating them, documented wonderful family times in them, but I've not been sad upon leaving them. At least not until now.

As I remove art from the walls, gather up knick knacks, throw away delivery menus for our favorite restaurants, and look out at the cityscape I am filled with an overwhelming sadness. The Wee One learned to walk around the ottoman, the sectional has slept many dear friends and family, I found I really like a galley kitchen, and I have appreciated that every kind of culture is right outside my door. I've loved handing over my keys so friends can explore the city even while we were away having an adventure of our own. I don't know that I will ever live in a place like this again.

Yes, this move is different. There is something about this home, this city, and this experience that will stay with me for a very long time.

Hard to Deny

   

                 
Yesterday I happened to come across this picture of my maternal grandparents and their four tow headed daughters. I have seen the picture before many times but yesterday it stopped me in my tracks. Sitting on my grandmother's lap was my grandson. No, not really my grandson, but my mother's version of my grandson.

Children can't just be themselves can they? They must resemble someone up the family tree and we will study and scrutinize until we see it. Oh yes, there is my dad's smile or my mother's chin. We immediately check to see if their eyes are going to be blue or brown, whether their ears are going to stick out like this uncle or that aunt, and hoping the cowlick you have fought for years doesn't present itself in this generation. Other times you look at a child and for the life of you cannot figure out how those two parents came up with that little person.Yesterday the shape of my mother's face, her nose, and her eyes all were reflected in recent pictures of The Wee One's face. At least I think so.  

I can remember looking at my young son and thinking he certainly is a miniature version of his father. He didn't look like me and in no way did he look like my mother and yet here my son has a son and his great grandmother's features appear. At least he has that in common with Prince George. As Prince George turns one there are lots of pictures of him matched up with his great grandmother Queen Elizabeth, each with expressions that mimic the other. (Then again, how many pictures of Kate's grandmother do we have to make comparisons to? I'm sure given the chance a case could be make for him having features of the Middleton family line.)

Sometimes I think we see what we hope to see. As The Wee One matures I am sure he will outgrow some of the facial landmarks that make him look so familiar to his dad's maternal side of the family. Goodness knows what will happen when we start to see characteristics of my dad's side of the family, or my son's paternal side, or his mother's maternal and paternal side! But no matter what the gene combinations for looks and personality he ultimately ends up with he will still be a unique person. Right now it will just be hard for him to deny a link to a certain great grandmother. (Let's just hope his barber is always better than her hairdresser!)

                                                  

While We Are Here........

I love a good road trip. But living in NYC has put a real crimp in any spontaneous decision to jump in a car and put the city in our rearview mirror. It now takes a little more planning and time constraints, as in renting a car in advance and committing to a specific timeframe for the journey. All that aside, we have managed to visit several sites over the last two years we likely would not have made a special trip from the Midwest to explore. Niagara Falls, Newport R.I., Philadelphia, and Gettysburg have been some of our destinations. This past weekend it was The Hamptons and Montauk on Long Island.

The trip planner (me) decided the best plan was to leave Friday morning, drive to the farthest point, spend the night, then work our way back to the city on Saturday. According to my electronic lap map (I am proficient with paper maps but when I can have a chap with an English accent directing my every turn over my iPad, well.....) the trip should take about three hours to get to Montauk. As with all well planned trips we reached our destination six hours later. Stopping at a funky beach town diner for lunch, a Carvel ice cream stop (a NY ice cream that in no way rivals Dairy Queen but my husband will argue differently), and bumper to bumper traffic through South Hampton, East Hampton, and Montauk made our trip more leisurely than we intended. It is hard to know where each hamlet, village, or burg ends and the next one begins. The foliage is all planted as a screen to keep properties private and you get the sense the only people on the island are those on the roads within your sight. Finally, the end of our day trip is a cul-de-sac with a lighthouse. An beautiful exclamation point on the end of Long Island.

The rest of the trip is pretty standard for an East Coast summer hot spot. Beautiful over-the-top beach houses, coves with boats, excuse me, yachts that rival the size of small islands, pretty people lunching outdoors, little shore towns with designer stores, and roadside crab shacks. The weather was perfect so we extended our second day to include a side trip to Oyster Bay, another quiet, picturesque shore town that is the final resting place of Teddy Roosevelt. It was hard to believe we were only 25 miles outside of New York City. 

Driving back into the city we both know these recent road trips have been very different than the long haul trips we tend to take in the Midwest. There it takes miles and miles for the scenery to change. The views are expansive, the towns are further apart, and the fast food calls to us from most every exit. But while we were here it's been nice to experience something different.......

Shades of Grey

Ah ha! Gotcha. No, this will not be a discourse on the appropriateness of a certain trilogy of books that recently spent a bazillion weeks on the best seller list. This is about picking the right shade of grey for a house, loving grey days, and trying to get rid of a certain grey area in my life. 

The Paint

Long story short: The two glorious years in NCY are coming to an end. We are scheduled to arrive back in The Midwest on July 30th. A new residence has been purchased and plans to prepare the new

nest were discussed during the last trip "home".  Bathroom cabinets will be raised, sconces will be removed (who uses sconces in every room of a house as their only light source!?), a shower door will be added, and every wall will be freshly painted. But what color to paint? Oh my, the choices.

I have always loved using the color grey as my neutral when decorating. Peach and grey were the interior colors of my very first home lots of years ago and since then I do believe every paint company has added thousands of grey shades to their color pallets. I'm taking the plunge and painting all the walls in our new house some variation of grey. I am hoping I do not walk in and think that I have just entered a prison cell. It would make me very sad to feel like I am carrying out some type of prison sentence. Jail cells are not known for making a person feel warm and fuzzy but I'm convinced it's going to be all about the accessories. I'll let you know.

The Weather

Mmmmmm. Today has been one of those fantastically rainy, dreary, grey days. This type of weather is my favorite. Not that I don't like fresh spring days and colorful fall days, but there is just something about the grey days that make me fell cocooned. It's a nap day, a reading day, a chore day. These are the days I feel like I am living in a black and white photo. There is just something nostalgic about a grey day.

And Finally.........

I began to notice the roots of my hair becoming much more grey a few weeks ago and decided to ignore it. Yesterday I realized it had been ten weeks since the last visit to a colorist and what I was seeing was not going to go away and wasn't going to blend in. Now matter how I combed, tucked, or fluffed my hair there was a significant portion of grey showing. Since the cost to visit a NYC hairdresser is equal to a car payment (and I'm talking about a nice car, not a clunker) I'm thinking it is a task I should take over. After all, what are all those boxed hair color aisles at the pharmacy for? I picked a shade I thought would cover nicely and figured worst case I would be wearing a hat, a big hat, until I could get in to see my much more reasonably priced hairdresser at home. It turned out not bad, but not great either. Maybe I should consider which shade of grey I can live with and just give in.

Nah.