Another typical day on the road to Utopia

I went out to lunch again with a colleague — one who indulges my need to document life around me.

These photos don’t really need a narrative.  A tender moment (?) on not-so-tender 6th Avenue and 50th Street.  Is this where you want to tell your children that daddy proposed and mommy said yes?  I guess that I’ll leave up to you to decide who is crazier.  I think it is the girl for saying yes. And the outfit requires a 911 make-over.

As if that weren’t enough, I read the Radio City Musical Hall promos and juxtaposed were:

Ok, Chelsea Handler shares billing with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  And we wonder why our civilization is rounding the drain.

Hey, I just show what I see.

I love the camera on my blackberry

Today, I was walking with a colleague to catch a bite at lunch when I saw two ladies, somewhere between the ages of older and ancient, crossing against the light with their backs to a truck that fast approaching.  I wanted to take a picture of this insane scene (after I made sure the truck stopped).  I took out my blackberry although the ladies were going slow enough that (after I made sure the truck stopped) I could have gone to a camera shop, bought a camera and come back in time to catch a live “action” shot, as it were. 

My colleague looked at me as if I had three heads (I only have two).  Then I started showing him the pictures I have on my blackberry — a colleague standing in front of a life-sized Catholic icon for sale, urbanites eating outdoors next to the garbage and the vagrants, a sign about septic danger, a scary food store somewhere on Cross Bronx Boulevard in Scarytown, NY where another colleague and I looked for Advil on the way home from a business trip. 

Lunch was quick and awkward.  I think he was scared I would take a picture of him with food falling out of his mouth.  So, in an effort to try to calm what I thought were his concerns, I talked with food coming out of my mouth.  I think I just grossed him out.  And made him more afraid.

I’ll let you know if he asks me to lunch again.

My birthday weekend

So, it started in an annoyingly jaded New York way, “I was rushing to my acupuncturist and simply had to stop to take these photos”.

Here are the photos.  As POB (partner of blogger) says, in New York, the rich live cheek by jowl with the homeless, and projects exist side by side with luxury condo buildings.  So, on one of the first beautiful days of the year, restauranteurs put tables outside and voilá, amid the downtrodden and the garbage:

So, trite but still so unbelievable.

I wonder if the needles hurt more because I was late.  Also, my acupuncturist is now a black-belt in karate.  Ok, a little Jekyll-Hyde drama unfolding.  But I digress.  Ok, maybe I won’t digress.  Now that I think of it, what am I doing having a black-belt shove needles into my nerve endings?   I did have a particularly prickly acupuncturist session.  More thought must be given and a full review is necessary (in another entry).

Dinner followed with my “adopted” daughter and her partner.  My daughter went to law school against my better judgment and sounder opinion.  Still, she seems to love it and, watch out, she will be a formidable adversary.  Still she makes a fabulous chocolate birthday cake.  Look and weep:

On the bright side, if you are her adversary and she cleans up the courtroom floor with your argument, she might bake you a consolation confection.  Just a thought.

So, my brother came in for the weekend to see my dad.  BOB (brother of blogger) had not been in town for over a year.  He had planned to come in during the September High Holy Days, but contracted swine flu.  So, we gave him a pass on that trip, without asking for the lab results (if you’re family, we don’t ask for proof of illness).

I was not looking forward to re-ordering my birthday weekend, but in the end it was fabulous.

BOB came solo — without wife and kids.  While we missed the full family complement, I think he was able to relax more.  BOB was dream uncle for my son.  They played ball and watched sun bathers (my son’s idea) [see prior blog about his MoMA visit] and just did that male bonding thing that is not always so possible if you have two moms.

We gathered the extended family who lives in Manhattan for dinner.  True to form, HOSOB (husband of sister of blogger) and one of our dear cousins got into a food eating contest.  At one point, one of our younger cousins took away the plates and forks but still there was salmon left uneaten.  Not wanting to dirty another fork (cleaning that fork expands our carbon footprint), I told HOSOB to use the serving implement.  Others thought I was joking.  HOSOB knew I was serious and, such a sweet and wonderful guy, he listens to me even though I am not his wife, SOB (sister of blogger):

Of course, I had to take a picture for the family archives.

I am not so sure what BOB thinks of the odd antics of the evening.  I would like to think that it was just like riding a bike — that he felt at home with the volume and the rhythm of an evening with the ganza mishpocheh (the extended family).

My birthday wish?  To have my brother, my sister-in-law and their boys laughing around my dinner table at Sunday night dinners (with pictures), so that, years from now, we can say, “remember when we used to have dinner together on Sunday nights?”

Ok, maybe it’ll be fifteen years from now, when my nephews (by then, young men) move to NY and drag their parents, kicking and screaming, in tow.  (A new agenda item at our weekly family meetings.)  Wishes take time, I know.

But it was so great to be together again, if only for 36 hours.  Mom z”l was happy.

And because up until that moment the evening lacked a (bloggable) weird twist, SOB handed me a copy of her Last Will and Testament, so I would have it for safe-keeping.  So, I signed up for the Hemlock Society because it seemed a natural progression.

We ARE weird.