NYC Day 04 - Racheting down the goals
After a dragging Small Z around yesterday and a fraught night last night, we’ve decided to slow our plans a little bit. Today M took Small Z to the park for the morning. I left mum at the apartment and went out to breakfast on my ownsome.
It was nice to get out without anyone. I walked where I wanted, poked into some shops, ate some blueberry pancakes and bought some secondhand books. I began an illfated quest for a new maternity bra and walked into a lingerie shop and told them what I was after. They pointed me to the back of the shop around a corner, where, hidden from prying eyes, were deeply unappealing examples of maternity corsetry. In beige. Gah.
Small Z had a mammoth nap, and M and I took off to have some quality time and ostensibly get a coffee. However, we stopped to pat cat, and in doing so, realised we were right next to one of my favourite things - an OP SHOP! Woo!
We didn’t have long, but we did well. M got some great shoes, a T-shirt, a jumper and a book. I did what I very rarely do (as I am cursed with inbuilt buyers guilt, even before I buy anything) and threw $30US at a dress. I have to say - when I got it home and tried it on properly, it was worth it. Hooray for me!
We spent the last two hours of the afternoon with SB, hiring bikes to ride around Central Park. Small Z, a bike virgin, did not take kindly to having to wear a helmet, and was not too sure about the whole thing, but we broke it up with yet another fantastic playground. The weather, as I may have forgotten to mention, continues to be sublime.
NYC Day 03 - Musings and meanderings
The little things that are different always slip my mind as soon as they are not around anymore, or as soon as I have been here a little while. The light switches are the opposite way, many toilets contain a scary amount of water, everyone drives on the OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD…
That last item has seen me close to being skittled a few times. I suppose that since I was about three, I was taught ‘Look to the right, look to the left, look to the right again’ and training myself to do the opposite is taking a few days.
People are very friendly. The coffee, as an article we just read explained, is seen more as a necessary fuel than something to bother taking any time over. Although this is changing. Today I bought M a coffee down at Battery Point, and got directed to a hot flask with coffee in it, and a jug of milk? I felt the whole of Carlton give an involuntary shudder.
Organic meat is considerably cheaper. Public transport is a LOT better, and probably cheaper. Instead of an ‘all day’ ticket or a ‘two hour total rort’ ticket’ it seems to be $2 a ride - and you can buy in bulk. I could spend a month riding the subway to different places - and am already getting the squeamy feeling that our time here is too short and running through my fingers.
I am fascinated by the rubbish around New York. Everyone one lives literally on top of one another, so there’s obviously going to be a lot of rubbish - but they all use those Oscar-the-Grouch rubbish bins. The kind I remember fit men in Stubbies short shorts collecting when I was smaller. A lot of it is just in bags.
In SB’s building there is one old-school rubbish bin for paper and another for glass and recyclable plastic. They’re collected twice a week. This seems like very little to me, considering the amount of packaging that everything comes in. There are piles of rubbish bags on the sidewalks waiting for collection, although it’s all neat. I suppose it is hard to invent another system - there is no room to store the kind of wheely bins that we use, and even if there was, there would not be any access at the curb for a truck to collect them.
Two more things. Sunshine and water. People are far less concerned about sun exposure, if the kids at the playgrounds are anything to go by. And water is still seen as something fun, rather than a constantly dwindling resource. It’s kind of nice to see the play fountains going in the parks for the kids to play in - they’re set up with little drain rivers that you can float things down.
And today? We spent the morning in the park, and in the afternoon caught the subway out to the River To River Festival at Battery Park. Both mum and I had thought an outdoor percussion thing was going to be on, but it was stringed instruments…and M confessed a love of chamber music.
We looked down on Ground Zero, which just looks like a construction site the size of a whole city block. There was nothing to indicate what had been before. The ordinariness of it all was odd.
Small Z did well, as the day was a long one - it’s lucky that she loves the subway.
NYC Day 02 - Parklife
Weather is gorgeous. We all awoke somewhat fried, as Small Z spent the hours between 2am and 4.30am awake and ready to party. We then went back to sleep for a few hours and then M took her over the road to the park, and what a park it is!
By 10am it was populated dads taking the kids out on Saturday morning, and a bit later all the yummy new york mummies with their gym toned bods and bouncy hair. I sat there with mum while m played energetically with Small Z. I was keen for someone to come up and chat to me so I could say that M was my manny - employed at great expense for his exuberance and ongoing similarity to the former Yellow Wiggle.
Small Z took a tumble off some play equipment and now looks like we beat her up. She is battered, but fine. The park is her joy - there are slides, climbing equipment, swings, a big communal sandpit with buckets and spades and a fountain that came on as the day warmed up for kids to splash around in. Excellent.
We were determined for Small Z to have her normal day to try and overcome the jetlag, so our morning comprised of the park, and a walk along the Hudson. She then slept for a few hours, and SB and went out to this amazing deli around the corner. Zabars.
The cheese section had me on my knees. I got a wedge of D’Affinois for less than five dollars. We got some bagels, bread, a cherry danish, some dip, lettucey stuff…but the best bit was all the tastings! It was like Queen Victoria Market squashed into a smaller space. It was heavenly…
We made some bagels, packed the danish and some wine and walked to Central Park, where we ate our way through it all. It seemed like half of New York was out walking in the park - there are SO many babies in SO many designer prams!Saw ducks, turtles in a pond, and took Small Z to another killer playground.
By then we were all exhausto, so we headed back to the apartment via another dip into Zabars. An early night for us all. SB headed back to his alterno-dwelling and probably partied on into the night. I feel the jetlag is on the way out… Tomorrow, we fleamarket and hit the Bronx.
NYC Day 01 - Books, fruit and money
All woke up at around 5am and by 10am felt like we had been awake for an aeon. Walked up to the shops and immediately began marvelling at the difference in prices to those in Melbourne. A punnet of organic raspberries for a DOLLAR and SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS? We were agog.
I saw four other women using Ergo baby carriers in about 20 minutes, which I found stupidly comforting. Small Z passed out in hers, and we took the opportunity to hit a cafe, and M bravely ordered a four dollar cappuccino. And reported that it was great. It obviously left him on a high, because he then went and bought a pair of Teva’s - a bit of a step up from the supermarket thongs and Dunlop Volley runners. Woo!
Then we went to Barnes and Noble, with Small Z still asleep, which was a shame, as it was kid heaven. Up in the children’s section we were wading through toddlers, who littered the floor, all reading books. It took me a little while to realise that many of the Latino looking women appeared to have very blonde babies…until I realised that a lot of them were nannies! Ha! Very New York. Some of the mommies even had their nannies accompanying them. Weird.
The great thing was…the books! Even with the exchange rate they were cheaper than they are in Australia. And we were excited to see Australian names on the kids ‘best loved books’ table - Jackie French and Mem Fox. We ended up buying Small Z a few books - the first new ones we’ve ever bought her! She got Time for Bed, Goodnight Moon, and (it’s a schmaltzy title, but a very beautiful book) I Love My Daddy. This last book is so gorgeous, and reminded me so much of M and Small Z together that I wanted to get it for M as a Father’s Day present, but when I showed it to him, he loved it so much that we grabbed it then and there.
After we went back to the apartment and Small Z woke up, SB took us to the ‘Top of the Rock’ - the top of the Rockefeller building, which gave us a fantastic view of the layout of the whole city. Small Z was out of her head with jetlag, and swung between manic joy, and tired whimpers. She loved the top of the building, and bestowed it with her approval - lying face down on the ground and giving it one lick. Sigh. Half the time there were more people looking at her than the view.
We bought some white wine on the way home - a little bit cheaper than we’re used to - and SB made us a pro-risotto. We all crashed out soon after.
I am in plane
There is very little to recommend flying across the world…or maybe that’s just because I always travel in economy. Oh god. Torturous. Small Z woke up at 4am, two hours before the alarm was set to go off. Our flight left Melbourne at 11.20am…and then stopped at Sydney, where we all had to get off and wait around for an hour or so.
My mother still uses a travel agent, and I haven’t yet decided if I want to strangle this person, or send her flowers. She assured us we would be sitting up the front of the plane with a bassinette. But apparently the plane was plagued with infants and we were put toward the back in the middle.
I felt huge dread about a 15 hour flight where Small Z had nowhere to run but our three laps, and felt even worse when our seating arrangements didn’t work out. Until M started putting some of our stuff on the fourth seat. I told him there was only three of us, and some poor bastard was going to have to sit there and endure hours of baby wrangling. He looked at me like I had grown another head.
“No. This is Small Z’s seat.”
“I don’t THINK so. She doesn’t get a seat. That’s why she travels free.”
He looked horrified. “What?! You reckon that she’s going to go all the way sitting on us? No way. That cannot be right. No, if that’s the way it is, I’m getting off now. I’ll stay in Sydney.”
“Der. That’s the deal. She’s free because she sits on us.”
“Then why has she got her own boarding pass and seat number?”
I boggled at him. I had let him be Fat Controller and take care of all the passports and other documentation - it seemed to comfort him, and I was happy to hand over the responsibility.
“Are you serious?”
“Totally.”
I was almost smothered by a wave of relief. We were then on tenterhooks as the people in front of us were told that, no, their baby could not have a seat as they hadn’t paid for one… I was sure they were then going to say the same to us, but it didn’t happen. God knows what I’ll do if this miracle doesn’t repeat itself on the way back, but it made the journey infinitely more bearable.
Small Z travelled like a champ, and it is luxurious to have a third pair of hands to play with her. I keep having to slap myself and not refer to my mother as my au pair. Ha! About five hours into the flight I was so tired, and determined to never fly anywhere. Ever again. But I managed to get a few hours of sleep with my head on M’s lap, and Small Z lying on top of me.
The onboard films were dire. The food was also dire. The plane was so old that the luggage compartments above the centre row of seats moved around whenever there were any bumps. Which was less than comforting. M marvelled at the agedness of all of the flight attendants, being accustomed to the nubile charms of domestic air travel.
The US accents leapt out at me, as did the slightly more formal way of speaking. It’s hard to put my finger on it. Maybe it’s that they say ‘certainly’ a lot and convey a particular sincerity. I will continue to study the phenomenon.
At LA airport we only had an hour and 15 minutes between flights. Not long, considering how much security rigmarole you have to go through. Last time I did a stopover at LA with my mother she turned into a rabid stresshead, and it happened again this time. She was freaking out that we were going to miss our connecting flight, and walked just short of running, through the whole thing.
She became even more frazzled when M was unable to recognise his bag on the carousel, and we had to stand there for about 15 minutes while he worked on a process of elimination. Whenever we had to line up again she would ask if we could go to the front of the line, and would be reassured by staff that were were going to make our flight with no problem.
Other than this rabid tendency, she is very good to travel with, except for her other habit of getting everyone around her ready for landing, poking her head over the seats in front of us, saying “Excuse me. Can you put your seat forward? We’re about to land?” She is the flight attendant concealed in passenger form. I’m fairly sure one day someone is going to hit her with an umbrella, or the safe-flying equivalent.
The good thing about our flight into New York was our arrival time. We got in at around 8pm, which meant that we could go to bed at a normal hour and try to slot ourselves into the different timezone. As we walked through the arrivals door, I saw a sign with Small Brother’s name on it, and my instant brain fogged conclusion was that the short, middle aged Italian looking dude holding it was my brother who had undergone some kind of unfortunate makeover. Wrong. He had got us a Very. Large. Car. in which to travel in style home from the airport, and the dude with the sign was our driver!
New York is slack in the same way as Melbourne when it comes to babies travelling in taxis - they don’t have baby seats, you just have to hold them on your lap and hope for the best, or take your own and install it on the spot. Which is why the very large car was great, because it had one in the back.
The driver had the accent of a purebred New Yorker, and chewed M’’s ear off over the 30 minutes it took to get to the Upper West Side. He had his laptop hooked up to his GPS, and this also enabled him to helpfully open a file containing photographs of all the famous people he had driven. I could feel M, who is a celebrity-phobe, shudder inwardly. As he drove off M shouted “I’ll be emailng you my picture!” But we’re not sure whether he heard.
It was lovely to see Small Brother again, and yet again be surprised that in person he is not quite so small. His apartment is gorgeous - high ceilings, huge windows looking over the road to an amazing park, and his furnishings are tasteful in the extreme. He and M bought a bottle of gin and some beer with which to toast our arrival, and Small Z investigated her surrounds, as I made friends with the couch. It was worth the journey, but I would still prefer to sail home.
C-O-F-F-E-E
Since I got M the coffee machine for his birthday, I have been turning to the dark side. I am actually a tea person. But I’ve begun using coffee for medicinal purposes…and also because I like using the machine. I like trying to make better and better coffee with it, tweaking my different approaches. I am embroiled in my own coffee challenge…
When I first decided that the coffee machine would feature in M’s three-pronged-present attack, I began researching on coffeesnobs.com.au. Their motto is Our name says it all. They’re not kidding. It took me a little while, but I finally got it. They are REAL coffee snobs, and that’s cool. But I just felt bad about what I was going to end up buying, due to normal financial constraints.
Over at coffeesnobs, you NEVER buy pre-ground coffee at a supermarket. You NEVER buy pre-ground coffee. Ever. Because three minutes after you grind it? It’s STALE. Apparently. And you don’t buy a crapola Breville number, you hold out and save your pennies, dammit, until you can afford something decent. Which will set you back at least a grand or so. And if this is patently impossible? Stick to your stovetop espresso or plunger…and spend $300 on a decent grinder instead.
I could have become demoralised, but then reality gave me a kick. Anything was going to be better than the plunger M had been dependent on since his stovetop espresso thingy had died. And thus, I got him the Breville Cafe Roma. Yeah. That’s right. You got a problem with that? I thought not. We’re liking it. But we liked it more when Mgs gifted us some coffee that took M’s supermarket pre-ground Vittorio out the back and flogged it dead. It was NICE. And I prefer TEA!
Since then we have gone back to the Vittorio, which I drink less of, because I don’t like it that much. My latest coffee drinking method of choice is warmed 1.5cm of cream in the bottom of a cup, with the coffee on top. Is good. I told my friends this, the ones who don’t call potatoes ‘potatoes’ (they call them ‘carbs’) and they visibly staggered. Like it was a bad thing. I think not.
But. The other day we ran out of coffee. I was at the supermarket, desperate to break away from Vittoria. It has recently been Fair Trade Fortnight, and I thought that if I was going to horrify the coffee snobs by buying supermarket coffee, I should, at least, buy ethically. I am not saying I made the wrong decision… My integrity is intact. The coffee, however, is revolting. I want to persevere, but can anyone out there recommend a decent Fair Trade coffee? One with a little bit of a KICK? That tastes like coffee, and not coffee flavoured cardboard? Hello?
Oh. And I almost forgot to mention, because I keep meaning to do a baby-music roundup review, but The Coffee Song from Ralph Covert has been doing the rounds at our place over the past month or two… Come on…everybody…
D-A-D-D-Y needs C-O-F-F-E-E…I want a latte, a cappuccino…and tonight…I think I’ll have a little vino…
Saturday in South Gippsland
We went to Loch for a goodbye-we’re-going-oversease-for-five-weeks lunch today. And I played avidly with dad’s completely awesome camera - a seriously sexy Nikon D300.
These pictures are so small because I took more than thirty - too big to email all of them to myself at any great size. But whatever. We had a lovely feasty foody day. Small Z tried avidly to tempt Splodge the cat with offerings of leaves and ’stickys’ (sticks) and fed the fish that live in the bathtub. Everything is lush, all the trees are mulched, but confused. The olive tree is olive-ing, the mandarin tree is mandarin-ing…the drought has buggered their timing.
Because we need another boat.
M and Small Z went for their morning boat walk, and M came back with his eyes aglow. He had been GIVEN a boat. He and Small Z had found it out the front of someone’s house around the corner with a ‘free’ sign on it, and went in to claim it. It’s a stinkboat, but it’s a COOL one! Quite Humberiffic in fact. Sadly, the very awesome looking motor is kind of dead.
It needs some repair. The trailer needs a little bit of work, and new tyres. It looked to me like the trailer had the same size tyres as the caravan - 13inch. I wrote down the number of the one remaining tyre, and put it in Google. All kneel for Google, for it knows almost everything. Some odd Queensland government transport site told me this:
P165/75 SR13 is an example of a typical tyre marking. The definition is as follows:
P = passenger
165 = section width
75 = height-to-width ratio
S = speed rating
R = radial
13 = rim diameter (inches)
So…now I just need to find a couple on eBay. Oh. Actually, I need to find four. Two for the new boat trailer and one spare. And another spare for the caravan.
