Maternal Escapades

My mother visited!

Yay!

Here is how it went down.

Alex and I picked her up at JFK on Tuesday and brought her back to Hotel California :)

After the tour (which took hours, god, our place is so ginormous) we walked up Greenpoint looking for food and after a few busts found a lovely little Thai place! Pad Thai, fried rice, soup... delicious! Well, anyway, good. I wouldn't go back, but I enjoyed it while I was there. And we talked about many fun things, including the story of Alex's parents getting together, which is a very cute story and I recommend that you ask him about it.

We stayed up late; we got a slow but pleasing start on Wednesday. Alex had the day off, so he came too! Oh boy.

....

Ok, I started this post like a week ago and did not finish it, and now I no longer remember all the details of my mother's visit. So the rest of the post will be sort of here and there recollections, instead of a chronological story! Oh, well. I am a lazy blogger.

She took me grocery shopping! That was great. That was so great. I have so much food now. I made lasagna last week! I will make homemade mac and cheese soon! I made halvah with the tahini she bought me! I am stocked up on peanut butter and pasta and pasta sauce and bagels! I was stocked up on eggs but I have already used them all, because I made brioche! At one point this last week, we had halvah, brioche, leftover chocolate cake, and chocolate chip cookies in the house, all homemade. I love my apartment. Also I love free food.

Also, Debby and Alex and I ate at a delicious little maybe-Greek-I-don't-remember restaurant. We came in sort of between lunch and dinner, and they weren't really ready, so they let us choose between the lunch and dinner menus, and we picked lunch because we were not super hungry. I had a toasted sandwich with cream cheese and lox and capers and some other stuff; it was exactly what and how much I wanted. That evening, we also wandered over to where I had lived on the Satellite Program, and also we saw Everyday Rapture, which is Sherie Renee Scott's brilliantly titled but somewhat mediocre, if highly entertaining, one woman musical, currently on Broadway. I liked it better than Alex and Debby did, but I was not, like, emotionally moved or intellectually provoked, or anything. But I did enjoy it a lot.

Also, Debby saw Rock Center and almost bought some shoes at Aerosoles, but didn't in the end, because she had to think about it and then someone else bought them first. Always leap to the punch! is the lesson of that story. Although I guess that strategy probably does an equal or greater amount of harm, in the long run.

As an aside, in between Debby and Meredith's visits, Alex and I encountered Johnny Utah's, which is a big, beautiful rodeo bar at Rock Center down dark stairs from the sidewalk, and I have never been that excited about a bar before! I can't wait to go some evening! Or afternoon, as it appears to be very crowded in the evenings. Also, the bartender gave me a glass of milk for free. This was after Alex and I spent several hours wandering through an Avenue of the Americas street fair, and I bought several pairs of earrings for myself and others and Alex bought me a necklace and a pair of sunglasses that make me look super hot and I bought him lunch, and anyway the point is we were tired and worn out and that bartender was very nice and I am in love with Johnny Utah's, even though all I have had there is a glass of milk in the empty afternoon.

Back to the story. Debby and I stopped one morning for lunch at a bagel place at maybe 23rd and 7th or somewhere thereabouts, and it was delicious. When I am rich, I will eat a toasted bagel with cream cheese and lox and capers and onions at least once a week. I'm pretty sure I've said that before on this blog, but it always bears saying again. After that, we walked through four (I think) used bookstores, not a single one of which had a single trashy romance or good fantasy novel, because they are all stuck up and I hate them. It drives me crazy that used bookstores carry all kinds of trashy shit in male-dominated fiction genres and also some truly terrible "nonfiction," but can't bring themselves to stock in fantasy or romances (romances outsell every other genre of literature in the U.S., by far! I mean, come on, it's not like they won't be able to turn a profit off of them!). But we bought six or seven books anyway, for me to take to camp this summer, and I just had Daddy send me a bunch of fantasies and romances from home to fill that gap. I'm going to be working probably 70 hour weeks! I need some easy reading!

Also, we ate at a Dominican (I think? I don't remember, really) place way up Greenpoint, and it was delicious, and we had this nice but totally clueless waiter, and they gave us bottled water in cups instead of just tap water, but I had seafood soup and it was so delicious, and I took it home and ate it with some of the sourdough Debby had brought me from California, and I felt as if I was sitting on a pier in San Francisco, and it was a great day.

Also I made French toast with the sourdough Debby brought me, and later the sourdough Ilan brought me at CSJO. I almost never make French toast these days, because it is just not as good when it is not with sourdough, and sourdough French toast is exactly what I want, it just hits the spot, and anyway the point is, yum it made me sooooo happy.

And now I am hungry and I can't remember anything else we did off the top of my head, so I will sign off and go eat, and Debby and Alex can let you know what I missed, if they feel like it! The end.