Some things seen and heard

Since we're leaving New York for real (I think) next Monday, I've been walking around with a heightened appreciation of the city.

West Village street, from Wikipedia Commons

On Tuesday I went down to the West Village and SoHo. I almost decided while I was there that if I ever move back here, I want to live in the West Village. It's so full of Italian eateries! One pasta shop that I went to, Raffetto's, was even closed for Ferragosto, the Italian holiday month. I stopped by Rocco's bakery and passed a Grom (an upscale gelateria that originated in Torino). And that was just a small sampling.

But even though Bleecker Street is full of Italian food, the old, tree-lined streets of the Village look distinctly American, perhaps Bostonian. Combined with the funky gift shops, they remind me of my other hometown (or one of them), Athens, Georgia. I stopped and looked at exquisite pottery, much of it Asian, in Global Table. I don't care much for the touristy, mall-like main thoroughfares on Prince and Spring in SoHo, but I like the side streets.

I wandered so far east on our math tutor Steven Tenney's recommendation that I went almost all the way to the Lower East Side. Eventually I rested my tired feet in McNally Jackson bookstore on Prince near Mulberry Street. McNally Jackson has an instant press for self-published or out of print books, and a sizable collection of new fiction. Among the various signs I saw posted in the store was:

"Alphabetized by author, or by subject if subject's fame exceeds the author's."

Ouch. Wouldn't you be mortified if your book were shelved by subject?

I also saw this book title: The Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands That I Have Never Set Foot on and Never Will.

I'm so glad that there are some left. By all means, let's stay off of them!

Unfortunately I had to skip Pylones, a funky gift store, but that was okay because I know there's one in the Porta Nuova train station in Torino. And I also, reluctantly, passed by Sur La Table. With extraordinary discipline (or maybe just tired feet), I ceased window shopping and walked all the way back to Houston Street, where I got on at the front of the comfortable old 1 train.

There, sitting in the seat across from me, was a pro-wrestler-looking sort of fellow wearing a T-shirt that read, "Boston Sucks." He was reading a subway tabloid and had one of those hand-strengthening devices in his cooler pack.

No sooner had I read his shirt than a second man walked onto the train. He, too, had an outer-borough look, and his shirt read, "Philadelphia Rocks." He had to pass right by the first guy to get to a seat.

"Nice shirt," muttered Mr. Not-Boston.

"Thanks," mumbled Mr. Philadelphia in the same macho growl.

They were both asleep by Penn Station.

Other people stories: There's a guy who puts bookmarks in all the local stores, at least on the Upper West Side, that say, "Dan Smith will teach you guitar." Once we looked him up, incredulous that someone would go to so much trouble to advertise a trade that's usually word-of-mouth. Indeed, he does teach guitar. So far as I can tell, he's not hoping for fame as a rock star or second Andres Segovia, with guitar teaching as the publicity vehicle. It's all guitar-teaching.

A couple of weeks ago during my visa flurry, I was FedExing my marriage certificate to Georgia to be apostilled, and an employee walks into the copy shop saying, "Some guy wants to know if he can put bookmarks in your store." I just happened to be walking out, and there was Dan Smith, looking exactly like he does in the ads, with the exact same expression. If I hadn't expected a human, I would have thought he was a cardboard cutout.

The other local persona I met this week was Hani, the guy who does the sidewalk chalk paintings. I found him squatting on Broadway between 106th and 107th, chalking in Margaret Thatcher. I decided to tell him about election night.

"Hi. You know those drawings you did of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the election?" I ventured.

He nodded.

"On election night, I saw someone drop to the ground and kiss the drawing of Obama. She was crying."

"That's a great story!" he replied.

All of New York is a great story.

After the storm

Yesterday after the storm, CZ and I took a walk in Riverside Park. Apparently it was the thing to do, because I'd never seen so many people there at one time before. It was like one big party!

Below are some of the pictures we took during our walk:

Down by the Hudson, people were standing over the railing to see how high the water had risen. They were taking pictures and standing against the wind like seagulls. And lots of people were out jogging. Apparently they were tired of being cooped up.

There was a nice big puddle in the middle level of the park. It was much more fun to wade through it than it was to walk along on the sidewalk. CZ borrowed my boots and filled them with water.

Batman showed up at the party, escorted by his dad.

I got rather fascinated with making a splash and trying to take a picture of it. None of my efforts was quite in focus, though!

And today is gorgeous!

One flight up

Watching Irene from the window of our empty apartment

We were supposed to move to Italy this weekend. All day Friday, while the packers were realizing they'd understaffed our move, and I kept running here and there to get them drinks and takeout, an Irene-shaped cloud hovered. Would our flight make it out in time, or not? Would our furniture make it to the warehouse? More specifically, would the sofa make it out the front door? We couldn't find the super to remove the hinges.

In CZ's empty (except for her piano) room, I heard my voice echoing as I called Alitalia--will you cancel? Can we reschedule? Call tomorrow, call tomorrow, they said.

The movers spent until 10 p.m. packing (against the building rules), and then said they'd have to come back on Saturday to finish (also against building rules). My revised plan was to clean the apartment for the tenants around the movers' efforts to get the sofa out, and leave for JFK by three. Thankfully, our neighbors had offered us their furnished rental apartment through the end of the month, so we were staying only one flight upstairs.

I got up around 2 a.m. on Saturday, sleepless--how to stock up on storm groceries just in case when I'd just emptied the pantry for an international move? And how to explain the extended move to the co-op board? I checked e-mail, and there was the cancellation.

I sent CZ out early to get some grocery staples (thus avoiding lines out every grocery door by 10 a.m.), while I supervised and cleaned downstairs. Bob spent three hours on hold with Expedia on his Blackberry, only to get disconnected. When the movers finally left at noon, the subways were shut down and there were seemingly no groceries left in the entire city. We didn't have much to cook, but we had tons of oil and vinegar that the movers had rejected, so we were good for salads until 2012. Bob and I doubled our phone efforts via Skype, and I called Alitalia. After four hours on hold, we finally got a rescheduled flight--for September 5th. But the customer service rep was very proud of the fact that the plane was brand new.

Once we got over our initial dismay (CZ would miss a camp with her new violin teacher in Italy), we started to see a silver lining in the cloud, so to speak. We had been wanting to say a proper good-bye to our city all summer, but we didn't have time. Now we would. Besides, after a week with an international move, an earthquake, and a hurricane, all I really wanted to do was sleep. So I did. I slept soundly all through the hurricane's approach!

Of course, this storm, just like the earthquake earlier this week, was more notable for disrupting regular New York life than for any destruction here. But I think it made the week memorable. This is the week the curtains shook from side to side, the rain broke the subway, and we didn't move to Italy. I wonder what will happen next week?

This and that post

I'm making this post because I'm waiting on the phone to talk with someone about COBRA coverage. This is what I do all day lately, and it's not the most interesting blogging material. But perhaps it will allow me to sneak in a quick post.

The photo above is my roof deck planter. I hastily threw in a few annuals in late May and put a net over them to keep the jays and starlings out. At the time we were having problems with the building watering system and I left for Italy in June thinking all the plants would surely be dead by the time we returned.

But when I finally got home and made it back upstairs (late July), our planters looked better than they ever had! Everything had filled in, the plants were lush (the basil has yellowed a little since), the tomato plants had become the size of a small tree (I apparently mistook Beefsteak shoots for Sweet 100s), and best of all, my mom's heirloom salad tomatoes had volunteered in the thick of the other herbs. Beefsteaks don't do so well in planter boxes (mine currently have a sort of rot), but the salad tomatoes are doing fine. Is this the law of benign neglect?

We also returned to find that a pair of Redtailed Hawks had adopted our neighborhood as their hunting territory. They may quite possibly be descendants of Pale Male, the famous Redtail who lives on Mary Tyler Moore's building on Fifth Avenue. If so, they are decidedly slumming in Morningside Heights. But either way, they get the same rich diet of New York City rats and pigeons, and I often see them at work around 6 a.m. when I wake up. (See below, and note the extended talons.)

But the photo above is the one that was the initial impetus for my post: I was cleaning out the science experiment cabinet and happened upon a mason jar that looked like the remains of an old experiment. At first I thought we'd grown some salt crystals, but then I noticed that the bottle was labeled, "Bleach." Then I remembered that I'd used a bottle of bleach to clean up after a bacteria experiment. So I poked the almost 1" crystals adhering to the bottom of the jar, and sure enough there were still bits of liquid bleach underneath the hollowed out pyramids. So I guess this experiment was a two for one!

One last anecdote: CZ recently performed in a nursing home concert for the 103rd birthday of one of the residents. When she walked back into the apartment after the concert, she announced, "Well, now I've seen everything!"

"You mean the 103-year-old man?" I replied.

"No. I was walking up Broadway at 107th and I saw a Columbia student carrying a four-foot-long, clear plastic toothbrush!"

I'll miss this city.

Growing up in the Metropolitan Museum: Part II

The view from the balcony

As I mentioned in my last post, every Friday and Saturday night, a group of chamber musicians play on the balcony of the Metropolitan Museum lobby. Museum-goers can sit at little round tables along the balcony and enjoy an apertif while listening to the music.

When Bob and I first listened to the music, we would just sit across the balcony for a few minutes during our weekend evening trips to the museum. We didn't expect a four-year-old to be patient or quiet enough for us to sit down and order anything. But soon we started to wander timidly through the area, child in tow. (I've seen many, many parents doing this since.) Then one weekend Bob and I went there by ourselves and tried out the bar itself.

Eventually we ventured to take CZ in to sit with us. To keep her entertained Bob had her play "guess the century" with the music. CZ, age five, barely knew what a century was. But her friend from the Chinese Scholars' Court played violin, and it turned out CZ liked the music. It may have also helped that the first violinist was a woman. For the next year, CZ begged me for lessons until I decided she was serious.

CZ, age six, watching the pianist at the balcony bar

The balcony bar became a part of our Upper East Side weekend routine. You could tell the musicians had seen everything: One night someone's napkin caught fire right next to the musicians. At the same table, soon afterwards, a man fell flat on his back as he started to leave. Another time, still at the same table, a tipsy group of women clapped loudly, not only between movements, but every time the musicians played a whole note. The most reaction any of this got were some politely raised eyebrows for the applause--the first couple of times, at least. Bob's mother remains the only person I ever heard actually get shushed by the musicians. She was right up next to the velvet rope explaining something to CZ, because our table was rather far back that night, and she had insisted that they go closer. Her voice does carry.

Once by the end of the first year or so, the cellist leaned over to the violinist as we sat down and muttered, "Here comes your fan club," indicating CZ.

There were other regular listeners, too, including a man we called "the cormorant," because he always sat listening to the music with his head cocked up in the air. There was a disheveled man who always carried a bag of papers that looked like a long-awaited dissertation. And there were people we saw only once, but were memorable, like a little boy who'd busked with his fiddle for a train fare to the city; a Mennonite woman and her daughter; a Mary McFadden look-alike wearing a long, wrapped crepe dress; and a man in a long linen caftan with a mandarin collar whom we dubbed "The Future," because he looked like a character from a science fiction movie. But these are just a cross section of the typical crowd.

We learned a lot about chamber music while listening to the balcony bar musicians over the years. During this time, CZ's skill on the violin was growing, as was our collection of CDs. "Name the century" grew into "Name the composer," and then "analyze the music." I discovered Dvorak's kinship to Brahms, and that I liked Brahms' chamber pieces even better than Dvorak's.

At least for me, the experience of listening to the balcony bar musicians was always somewhat synesthetic. I was coming at this experience from many years of enjoying drawing and painting, so my understanding of the music was colored by what I had just seen in the galleries. And after we'd make our escape before the final flourish (the group had a habit of ending with a waltz, which we never liked as much as the previous piece), the colors in the galleries (especially the Degas pastels in their darkened rooms) seemed more vibrant from the music.

The Singer in Green, ca. 1884

Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917)

Pastel on light blue laid paper

23 3/4 x 18 1/4 in. (60.3 x 46.4 cm)

Once we moved to Morningside Heights, though, the museum was too far away to visit every weekend. And once CZ started music school on Saturdays, our museum experience was almost eclipsed altogether. We'd mostly go once or twice during the summer. CZ was also becoming a teenager, and once while we were looking at Chinese ceramics, she confided, "This gallery reminds me of wanting to go home." It seemed we were moving on.

But this weekend, knowing that we'd be literally moving on soon, I asked to go back to the museum for one last Saturday evening. When we got there, CZ wanted to wander through the galleries by herself with a camera. Bob thought it might mean she didn't like us, but I understood that it meant she wanted one experience of the museum that was entirely her own. We agreed to meet at the balcony bar at 7:15.

When Bob and I got there, it was almost as though the musicians were waiting for us. We got a table very close to the group (minus the first violinist, who was on vacation), and they were just playing the first notes of my favorite Brahms piano quartet (No. 2). There were no noticeable patron antics that evening, and we simply sat and listened to the whole quartet while CZ took some photos.

As we left, I wanted CZ to go up and thank the musicians for introducing her to chamber music. "Otherwise we'll just disappear, and they'll never know why," I said. I didn't think it was my place to tell them for her, as I've spoken for CZ too long already and I think it's time for her to speak for herself. But she didn't want to, so we left without saying goodbye.

Maybe we'll go back one more time before we move to Italy. Maybe we'll move back here one day. Maybe CZ will move back by herself. Or maybe the years will roll by, everything in the museum will be remodeled, the balcony bar will be discontinued, and our ghosts will be exorcised altogether. But in my mind, the Metropolitan Museum will always be an important part of our family memories, one that spanned three apartments and may have, in the long run, been the place our daughter grew up.

Growing up in the Metropolitan Museum: Part I

CZ, age four, in the Venetian Rococo Bedroom at the Metropolitan Museum

If I had to pick my favorite place in New York City, I'd have to choose the Metropolitan Museum. The reason is partly that it's one of the best art museums in the world, but it's also because of personal history. When we first moved to the city, we lived on the Upper East Side, only a few blocks from the museum. I was a portrait artist who had never been in regular contact with master oil paintings, and besides, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment with a three-year-old. Almost immediately I bought a membership to the museum so that I could take CZ for a short visit whenever we wanted to see a bigger, grander space.

So that CZ wouldn't get bored, I used to let her take me by the hand and lead me where she wanted to go. I liked the whole museum, so it didn't matter to me where we went. Little CZ, on the other hand, had a clear favorite: The Venetian Rococo Bedroom. It featured a brocade bed that would have been the envy of any princess. Gentle afternoon light shone eternally through false windows, lending an appropriate sense of luxurious ennui. But the best part was the ceiling: It was supported by about a dozen painted wooden putti, holding up something that looked like an inverted soap dish over the bed, a painting over the antechamber, and some sort of shield that looked like a bit of insubstantial rococo exuberance in between. We called the room "Flying Babies." Naturally, CZ wanted one. We even found some in an antique shop once.

"They're $15,000, dear," said the gently smiling employee, to CZ's inquiry.

Bedroom from Sagredo Palace, Venice, 18th century (ca. 1718)

H. 25 ft. 2 in. (767.1 cm), W. 18 ft. 2 in. (553.7 cm), D. 13 ft. 2 in. (401.3 cm) Rogers Fund, 1906 (06.1335.1a-d)

Of course I had my favorite works, too, much appreciated after my own museum-free childhood: The five Vermeers, the Sargents, the Degas pastels of dancers and women bathers, the flat Manets, the Van Dycks, the Rubens painting of The Holy Family with Saints. All the Byzantine jewlery. The medieval manuscripts and a certain bejeweled gospel cover on loan from the Morgan Library. And a tender statuette of a Madonna and Child from 13th century Paris.

During this time I also discovered that I liked Asian ceramics and calligraphy. Sometimes we'd go to the Asian wing with a friend of CZ's who was adopted from China and the two girls would play in the Chinese Scholars' court. The friend was fond of playing "office," so they would use the railing to print out pretend documents under the skylights. They also liked to try to coax the oversized koi in the back of the fish pond out of hiding. Once a group of tourists came in and the girls scowled at them. They were willing to share the city playgrounds, apparently, but not the Chinese Scholars' Court.

After about two years of museum-wandering, one day CZ led me up a flight of stairs to a part of the museum I'd never seen before, a collection of Early Americana with a beamed Puritan meeting house ceiling in the main room. It was surrounded by a suite of period rooms, several of which no longer exist. By the time we started reading about American history, CZ was intimately acquainted with open hearths and iron spiders, crewel work, rugs on tables, and the old habit of carving one's name with a ring or penknife into the bedroom window. Not that she had any particular interest in history. She breathed it unnoticed, like 70 degree air.

And of course no Christmas season was complete without a visit to the Angel Tree.

But at some point within the first two years, CZ's focus at the museum began to shift to the balcony over the entrance lobby. There, every Friday and Saturday night, a group of chamber musicians would play from 5 until 8. Museum-goers could sit at little round tables along the balcony and enjoy an apertif while listening to the music. I remember having been mildly annoyed the first time I noticed the musicians because they were right in front of some of the best cases of Chinese ceramics. Little did I know how symbolic that displacement would become.

The balcony and lobby at the Metropolitan Museum from the grand staircase.

Adventures in Manhattan Real Estate: Storage

Our old 450 s.f. apartment--practically all of it!

If you've ever lived in Manhattan, you know that storage, not renovations or photography, is really the biggest issue in selling a home. You know you're a Manhattanite when you go home for Christmas with your small child and all you can think is, "No large gifts. Please, please, no large gifts!" The relatives tease you, calling you Scrooge. We lived for six years in a 450 s.f. apartment, CZ fishing through the trash daily for things I'd thrown away.

When we moved to a 2-bedroom apartment in 2004, we were able to let a little pressure out of the space valve, but of course we expanded, too. We're still not pack rats by suburban standards, but I bought books and cooking supplies, Bob bought bicycles, and CZ bought sheet music. And found a piano in the basement. And acquired things at a much faster rate than she got rid of them. I just closed the door to her 8 x 10 bedroom and figured she'd get tired of the clutter eventually.

So when Amelia, the real estate broker, breezed through the apartment and told me to remove the extra pillows from the closet, I knew we were going to have to tackle CZ's room. "My room is so small you have to spell it with one 'o'!" CZ improvised as we surveyed the job to be done. Though I could have retorted that unlike most New Yorkers, she didn't have to share it with anybody, I was sympathetic. What she needed was an attic, to keep the best stuffed animals, the best books, the best childhood artwork in. But she didn't even have a system.

So in we dove.

A typical "dolphins decode alien vessel" problem

First CZ pulled out six years worth of Steven Tenney math packets. These are no ordinary math packets. They're lovingly crafted, and populated by fairies, invading alien ships, and "strange and beautiful parties." Each type of problem has its own illustrations and story line, some of which CZ had spent hours coloring. She'd gone from simplifying fractions to calculus with them. CZ unstapled a stack of packets two feet thick and separated them all into their various components so she could save her favorites. Copy paper covered the entire living room for three days. There were over thirty different types of problems, each to be nostalgically recalled, and fairy-drawing developments to be noted. And after it was over, the stack really didn't look much thinner.

Next we tackled her filing system. We made a music file and an academic file. The music file was thicker. Some of the findings in the academic file were amusing: A folder filled with nothing but "bicycles for famous composers" drawings. Three unlabeled folders with one practice SAT essay in each, and another labeled "SAT writing." Thirty-five dollars in cash in various greeting cards! A thick file with various papers on Sibelius, and notes for papers on Sibelius. And one folder that I couldn't quite figure out the category for, until CZ explained, "It's stuff I like."

CZ's room, mid-project

We untangled and balled up a huge drawer full of yarn, made piles of clothing and books for the thrift store (all those unread historical fiction books about twelve-year-old boys orphaned in the midst of historical events), and gave away all the unfinished science kits. We gave a huge bag of markers to the neighbor kids. And we probably reduced the contents of the room by a third. But she couldn't bear to part with the Legos, the sewing machine, the pattern blocks, many of the craft supplies, the stuffed animals that had made the cut to adolescence, years and years of music programs, and most of the books. I couldn't part with a smocked dress and a wool jumper she'd worn when she was six. Or her first white baby dress.

This is where I remembered that Amelia had noted, "You're very close to a Manhattan Mini-storage." At first I had balked at the idea. Pay to store stuff you don't even need? But as the de-cluttering project passed its first week and there still wasn't room for everything, I realized it might be a good investment. And then Bob changed jobs and brought home all his old client files. That sealed the deal.

At Manhattan Mini-storage I discovered a hidden world. I was expecting a hot, dusty, rather seedy warehouse full of wire bins and mice, sort of like the place where we used to rent CZ's violins for cheap. What I found instead was something of a phenomenon: An attractive lobby with sliding glass doors, clerks in suits who give you bottled water, a corporate culture, a sophisticated card swiping system, and floors and floors of lockers filled with stuff New Yorkers didn't quite want to get rid of. As I waited for the elevator with our first load (a suitcase full of the office files and a bicycle), I saw a woman walk out of the building carrying a set of bongo drums.

When we got off the elevator on "our" floor, I felt like a Lilliputian in a locker room. Or perhaps a rat in a lab maze. Fifteen-feet high on either side were gleaming white lockers in three levels, with portable staircases to access the upper ones. Fluorescent lights flickered on by motion detectors as we proceeded down the labyrinthine hallways. In my head, I started to hum the theme from the old "Get Smart" show. But most notable were the smell and feel of the place. It was centrally air-conditioned, with wall-to-wall olefin carpeting. Which was distinctly un-Manhattan-like. It felt more like suburban Atlanta. Of course! With so much storage, it had to.

CZ and I figured out the lock system and laughed as we closed the door on our first load of stuff. Across the hall from our locker was a bulging door with a tiny bit of pink chiffon sticking out of it. Would we ever sink to this level?

On our way back to the elevator, we passed an old woman in a plaid skirt and a blouse with a stand up ruffle collar, pushing a cart. "Welcome to the world of mini-storage!" she greeted us. This place was even friendly like suburban Atlanta! But she had a conspiratorial edge to her voice that was distinctly New York.

Adventures in Manhattan real estate: Photography

On Wednesday the real estate photographer came to our now-spiffed-up apartment. We had carefully planned the session to maximize the light, but on photo day it was pouring rain.

"No matter," said Amelia. "The photographer can make it work."

When the photographer showed up, he set up a tripod and did time-lapse exposures. But not before the real estate team had "staged" the apartment. They pulled out a chair here, removed a lamp there, placed plants strategically, put in Granny Smith apples to reflect my kitchen paint color, and generally made it look like I was about to throw a party.

I had expected as much, but I was a little surprised when I heard Andrew say to the photographer, "Lose the pipe." He was referring to a little water pipe at the base of our refrigerator which I had always considered part of the charm of a prewar apartment. True, it was probably going to look more prominent in the fish-eye lens photo than it did in real life, but was he going to photoshop out something that was actually there? When I saw the final photo of the kitchen, I realized that yes, he had!

Anyway, I've posted two photos of our living room above--the photographer's and my own, taken within a few minutes of each other, from the same angle. That way you can play spot the differences, too.

Now of course I know they have to do this. You have to be able to see the whole room in the photo to decide whether you're interested in going to the open house, and I want to get people into my apartment just as much as they do. But when my cozy, private self looks at these photos and thinks, "Which room would I rather live in?" I choose my photo, not theirs. My photo is of a room in which you could sit around and have a conversation, take books off the shelf, or (as we did last night) host a chamber group rehearsal. And it's the room I know and love.

***

Update: Just because you asked, I'm putting in the kitchen photos, too. Unfortunately, since I had to move them down, I don't know how to make them enlarge-able.

The graphics look very 1950s magazine, don't they? I like the way there are no shadows under the fruit bowl.

Adventures in Manhattan real estate: Renovations

One of my full-time jobs during the past two weeks has been to get our apartment ready to sell.

The minute we knew we were going to sell, we hired our favorite agents, Amelia Gewirtz and Andrew Phillips of Halstead. We met this duo eight years ago, when we were looking for our present apartment. We walked into an open house for an Upper West Side pre-war co-op apartment* that had never been renovated. The kitchen still had a basin sink from the turn of the century. But the living room looked like there was a cocktail party going on in it. There were at least thirty people there, all eyeing each other competitively. "We'll take bids until Wednesday," they said. We put in what we thought was a fair bid, but they sold it for $50,ooo over the asking price.

We had been trying to sell our small apartment by owner all summer, but in New York, it's just hard to get momentum without an agent. So we hired Amelia and Andrew, and within a week they sold our apartment for over the asking price. With a dead mouse in the refrigerator motor. (It took me a while to find the source of that funny smell.)

This year's market is not the same as 2004's, but Amelia and Andrew still know what they're doing. Amelia breezed through the apartment a couple of weeks ago. "Lose the stack of pillows in the closet," she said. "You need white stunt towels in the bath. And a new floor--Your tile is cracked. And new countertops, white marble ones. This apartment is all about the light."

I flinched, but I obeyed and called the contractor she recommended. A week later Joe Pesci's twin, voice and all, showed up at our apartment. His name was Eugene, and he was shorter than I was (which is saying a lot). "Nobody can renovate your apartment in one week," he practically shouted at me. "But I'll take care of you. I want you to sell. I loike you!"

I got to know Eugene quite well over the next five days, at least if I can believe half the things he said. He claims that he's going to be the lead in a reality TV show next year, that he has stock tips, that he is seventy-years-old, that he got in a fight with Donald Trump in a restaurant, that Calvin Klein won't let anybody else do work in his home, that his Sicilian father owned a whole chain of grocery stores but never sent him to school, that Osama's execution was a cover-up, and a million other things. His favorite exclamation was, "They cheated ya!" This was directed at the people who did the last renovation.

CZ liked Eugene, which is saying a lot, because she doesn't talk to just anyone. "You know, you look like that actress. That actress on TV," he suggested the last day of the renovation. Of course we had no idea what he was talking about; we don't even own a TV. But she nodded dryly, "Oh, yeah. That might have been me..."

"I loike you! I loike your style!" shouted Eugene.

Amazingly, Eugene was true to his promise, and the renovations were complete by Tuesday morning. We cleaned furiously for the rest of the day, finishing just in time for the photographer's arrival on Wednesday. The result: Totally worth it, especially the entertainment.

Our kitchen, with new countertops

*This is New York real estate-speak for an apartment built before WWII. Most of the apartments in our neighborhood, in fact, were built around 1910, just after the subway was constructed. A co-op means that everyone who lives in the building owns shares in it and the building is managed by a resident board.

Snow on top of snow

This winter our family has gotten used to snow on top of snow. If you live in a place where it snows all winter, you may find this old news. But in New York City, this is not usually the way snow works. Here it snows a nice eight inches or so, it melts pretty much completely, and then later it snows again. This happens maybe three times during the winter. And in Georgia, where we're from, you're lucky to get more than a dusting.

But there have been at least four significant snowfalls in New York City within the past month, totaling over 50 inches. Last week snow enabled us to ski on powder, a real novelty in the eastern U.S. By this week, that snow was starting to look a little worn around the edges, but all day yesterday we got lots of new, slushy snow. The previous boundaries between the snow and concrete were covered up like rumpled sheets under a hastily made bed. Last night when I walked up Broadway to meet CZ after a class, freezing rain was falling on top of the slush, making the sidewalks unusually slippery. There goes the snow, I thought.

Not so. At about 9:30 last night I looked out to see--a blizzard. The weather was like a summer thunderstorm, except that the precipitation was frozen and it lasted a lot longer. A fierce wind, complete with thunder and lightning, blew in over the Hudson, plastering the west sides of all the buildings with sticky snow. CZ and I sat on the hot radiator and watched it whirl around under the street lamps.

This morning we woke up to 19" of new snow. That's enough for whipped cream effects on the tops of bus stops and the feeling of walking on powdered sugar at every corner. I took a thirty-minute walk this morning during which I competed with dozens of residents for interesting shots of our usual neighborhood in its new guise.

So here's our neighborhood, transformed by snow. And as CZ notes, "It covers up the rat tracks so prettily."

Gust-busted

Anatomy of a Gust-Buster umbrella

It started out innocently enough. CZ's classes at the tutoring center are on break, and the afternoon was rainy, so we took the opportunity to go to the American Museum of Natural History, where we saw the Silk Road Exhibit and watched an IMAX movie about the Great Lakes. But CZ didn't want to put my umbrella in her bag because it might get her book wet.

After the museum we ducked into an excellent nearby coffee shop, Joe, that I'd recently read about in the NY Times. It was a perfect afternoon for coffee, since we were cold and damp. I had a macchiato and CZ a latte, both with excellent steamed milk. We nabbed a 12" x 18" table, one of seven in the tiny shop. There were two people working on laptops, both Macs. A pale young man in huge blue-tinted glasses was talking with a girl whose T-shirt dress stuck out from her leather jacket at random angles. The shop was somewhat hip for the Upper West Side, but that doesn't describe us. We just like good coffee.

The wind picked up during the night. We could hear it rattling the cables against the sides of buildings and sending rain splattering loudly against the windows. CZ and I independently heard the roof deck furniture collapsing upstairs in the middle of the night. At one point the wind sounded exactly like an angry cat.

It was really a better day to spend inside reading, but we didn't. When Bob and I went to meet CZ for lunch at the music school as usual, he had the idea to go watch a nearby criterium race. (A bike race that repeats a short course.) Bob and CZ both convinced me to go, but I noticed that CZ conveniently had to go back to school after two laps. Bob and I stayed until the finish. As the wind was blowing sideways, we were soaked and cold, despite umbrellas, baseball caps, and hooded raincoats. We were the only spectators who didn't know someone in the race, I think. But I did enjoy watching the exciting finish in which two riders on a breakaway battled it out for the lead.

As we crossed Riverside Drive to head home, a strong* gust hit us head on. It tore off Bob's beloved Oregon cap and sent it sailing back across the street. I grabbed my own cap, which was coming off, and instinctively turned around. As I turned, the wind caught my umbrella and I found myself running back across the street toward the park involuntarily. "Wow," I remember thinking as I tried to put some drag on the umbrella, "I really don't think I can stop!"

I finally did stop, because I hit a waist-high metal railing, the umbrella wrapped around it, and I bent over the umbrella. I looked up to see Bob stomp on his now-muddy hat to keep it from disappearing over the park wall. Then I looked down to see my ventilated Gust-Buster umbrella, veteran of many Manhattan nor'easters, inverted, its metal spokes twisted and torn, and the shaft bent at a forty-five degree angle. Busted. We finally limped to a Broadway bus, and I spent the ride home trying to unbend the shaft enough to get the umbrella closed, much to the amusement of the only other passenger on the back of the bus. The umbrella didn't want to stay closed, and the windows were so fogged up that we missed our stop.

Now I was umbrella-less, which was just as well because this weather was beyond umbrellas. I stuck our jeans into the dryer, jammed my scraggly hair into a ponytail holder, and we went back out for CZ's studio recital. After the class, Bob wanted to go out to dinner, but not right away. So we went home, then back out to our neighborhood Indian restaurant, which turned out to be closed for a party. By this time it was pouring, so we ducked into the Thai restaurant next door, ordered something hot (in both senses), and amusedly watched dozens of people try to cross Broadway without getting their umbrellas ripped apart. Unsuccessfully.

I only wish I had a photo of all the splintered umbrellas that sprouted from every corner trash-can in the city this morning! At dinner we had estimated one umbrella per can, with four cans per corner, all over Manhattan. We underestimated. This morning we easily saw four per can all the way down to 64th St. That makes sixteen per corner, multiplied by ten-plus avenues and about 130 blocks before Manhattan begins to narrow to the north...that's a whole lot of mangled umbrellas!

Some streets had five or so umbrellas in the gutters between the trashcans. There were single spokes in the middle of intersections, drowned in puddles of water, no evidence of a shaft in sight. Some umbrellas were in two parts, shaft on one side of a tree, spokes on the other. Some looked like long-dead spiders you sweep out of corners in the spring, supine with their legs curled in. Usually the cloth was at least partly ripped from the spokes. We began to look with wonder on any New Yorker who still possessed a whole umbrella.

It's still raining, and there's more rain predicted for tomorrow. I think I will stay in. And call Gust-Buster. They claim to fix their umbrellas for free!

*Bob and I estimated that the gust was at least 60 mph. Since Gust-Buster umbrellas are tested to withstand up to 55 mph, we must have guessed right.

Snow day

After being slighted by two snowstorms this season, New York City finally got a big snow of its own. This afternoon CZ and I took a long walk through Riverside Park and down by the Hudson to survey our neighborhood transformed:

The usual bedlam on "Death Hill," Riverside Park. (That's not its official name or anything. It's just what our neighbor calls it.)

A Common Merganser on the ice-cold Hudson

Yesterday there was lots of ice on the river, but today the swift current had swept it all away.

Seagulls were using the wind to hover over the river.

Back up into Riverside Park again. On snow days, parks in New York always look like Narnia to me. I think it's the lampposts and the stone walls.

"Death Hill" from another angle. Just before I snapped this picture, I saw a man (far left) almost get hit by a sled going really fast. He jumped several feet into the air, over the laughing sledder (now next to him in the photo), and was met with hoots of approval.

My favorite snow structure of the day, and igloo complete with drawbridge.

Snowboarders had built their own ramp and were doing impressive jumps down the hill. (Unfortunately my hands were too frozen to catch any jumps in motion today.)

Don't you like what happens to snow in the evening light?