Hey, remember me? – Hive and Nest

I haven’t posted for a while. I’ve been in New York! Without kids!  Do I even have to tell you how wonderful it was? Mister, who you may or may not have heard, was not terribly excited to go at first (I did write a spiteful blog post about it, but deleted it the next day since it sounded so bitchy).  After we’d been there about three hours he proclaimed, “I love New York. Let’s move here!”  Easy cowboy, that’s never going to happen.  I like NYC but it’s not a place I’d ever want to live in a million years.  Visiting, however, is another story.  I used to live Upstate and visited pretty often.  Most of my memories were set against a backdrop of cold weather and the smell of urine.  This time the weather was lovely and we visited hardly any pee-scented locations.

Mister loves the thea-tuh and we saw five plays.  Actually, I only made it to four.  I just couldn’t do two in one day.   I did get to see Rupert Everett doing Noël Coward.  R.E. is definitely on My List (Right after Jude Law and Matt Damon). But of course in my dream world he would be heterosexual. And be hot for sassy brunettes who have lots of kids and a voluptuous figure.

The museums were excellent, the food was mostly wonderful, and the taxi drivers were surly.  It was typical New York.

Do you recall the song from Schoolhouse Rock about The Great American Melting Pot? “Lovely Lady Liberty, with her book of recipes. . .” Let’s just say I sang that song about a hundred times in a two hour period. (You should watch it here.  Take your kids on a stroll down memory lane.)

I used to have this picture hanging in my apartment in college. Here it is in real life. Well, not real life. It’s still a picture. But you get the idea.

Mister and I at Rockefeller Plaza. My kids all asked if we saw Buddy the Elf ice skating. No we did not.

I got together with a few friends in New York. (I forgot to take pictures of my friend Heather whom I know from Segullah. She showed us first-hand how crazy it is having three little kids in Manhattan; negotiating the subway with a stroller? YIKES!)  

These are my friends Stephanie and Kevin from middle school. I hadn’t seen them in over 20 years. We had a great time and talked non-stop for three hours. Here’s a sweet story: Stephanie and Kevin lost touch when high school ended. They both wound up living in Brooklyn and ran into each other a few months ago. They started dating and just got engaged.

On a sad note, taking care of six children for five days just about killed my mother. She is used to staying up very late, sleeping in and taking naps every day. That doesn’t really jive with getting kids up and out the door at 7 am, then supervising a couple of destructive busy toddlers all day. So it looks like this was my last child-free trip until my kids are old enough to take care of themselves. I think I might just cry.