A Brasserie!!! And not just a Brasserie, but a Brasserie that rivals some in Paris. While the guys headed to Lego Land, I headed to Aixois and my waitress told me one of their secrets…they have some of the best beef on the planet. SOOOO…lunch was maybe the best steak sandwich I’ve ever had, roasted tomato soup and a glass of Cotes du Rhone.
Perfect for some much needed ‘me’ time.
(FULL DISCLOSURE: Before I had G and became a full time Mom, I used to silently judge Mothers who didn’t work and constantly spoke to me dreamily about ME time. ’ME time? BAH!’ I would chortle to myself, ‘I don’t have any ME time!’ Oh, yes I did. I did. I had so much, so much me time and I didn’t even know it. Please feel free to silently tell me, ‘I told you so.’)
It is nice to know that after all these years, Ferris Bueller‘s Chicago still delights. We’ve had run-ins with just about everything Ferris did, with the exception of Wrigley Field and Charlie Sheen, but who knows? We still have 2 weeks to go. With wind burned cheeks and lips that peel off when we speak, we are tearing through this gusty blast of a town. We just love it. It is the true capital of the mid-west. Sophisticated, but not elitist. Forward thinking, but not crunchy granola. Confident, but not narcissistic. And of course…it has a fantastic sense of humor.
Wait! Did I just describe myself? BAH Ha Ha!
Moving on…
our eventual view to the left of the Wrigley
The start of our trip was actually not terrific. We had a one bedroom apt on Michigan Ave, sight unseen. We’ve had great luck in this department so far, but yikes…our luck ran out at this place. It wasn’t clean, so that was that. BUT it was also lit with all florescent light, and I don’t mean eco-low watt bulbs. I mean, full on, high school lunch room florescent light. If I learned anything from Deborah, it is that under no circumstances should one allow themselves to be poorly lit. In fact, she basically lived in a dark cave after she turned 50.
and our eventual view of Navy Pier to the right
Luckily, Michael found the last place available in all of Chicago (at our price point) on North Columbus and we were thrilled to walk into not just a clean and lovely apartment, but floor to ceiling windows that provided us views of (other hotel rooms and) bits of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan itself.
This brings us to to our first Ferris activity…a parade. We weren’t in it, but we did go watch it. The Magnificent Mile is a stretch of Michigan Avenue that starts just across the river. It boasts lovely shopping and at Christmas time they light it. But they don’t just light it, they have a big parade book ended by Mickey Mouse and Santa, then fireworks, then they light it. A lady at the grocery store told me all about it. The best place to stand, she said, was along the river in front of the Hyatt. Really? I thought. That’s one of the hotels we can see into from our apartment. How perfect is that?
So I took G at 5 that day and stood in the cold with some lovely people who gave him chips and juice and then Michael joined us at 6 when the parade started. We saw Mickey and Minnie and then we left at 630. If you didn’t know, Michael doesn’t enjoy crowds or parades really, and besides, my feet had turned into ice chunks. No matter! We could watch the rest of the parade from the safety and comfort of our apartment…at least the bits we could see in the corners. This was a good move considering the fireworks were loud and according to one little man…scary.
Our next Ferris inspired adventure was a climb up to the top of the of the John Hancock building, made very accessible by the world’s fastest elevator (I think that’s what they said). The miniature views of the city below are of course, spectacular. But the view of that great Lake Michigan is just beyond. It goes on and on and I have always felt so comforted to know that there is not ONE shark in it.
Lastly we hit the fantastic Art Institute of Chicago. I could really do a whole separate post on it, I enjoyed it so much, but I don’t have time! Ack. We of course went to see it’s big prize, the impressionist pointillism by
I snapped this section above the heads of other viewers
Georges Seurat, Sunday on La Grande Jatte. It did not disappoint. Unlike the Mona Lisa that is so teeny tiny, this painting is something you can, in fact, get lost in. It’s no surprise, I spent most of my time in the Parisian impressionist section, but I also have to say G and I really enjoyed the Thorne Miniature Rooms. These rooms are honestly miniature, I mean the few rooms you see below are completely miniature reproductions, 1 inch to 1 foot in scale. Mrs. Thorne was married to a wealthy Chicago so and so (James Ward of the whole Montgomery Ward situation), and decided to create rooms with her overwhelming abundance of doll house miniatures. Eventually she began to commission pieces by artisans to her exacting standards in order to complete her rooms with absolute historical accuracy, quite a hobby.
English dining room-Georgian: artic.edu
Virginia dining room, c. 1800: artic.edu
French Boudoir-Louis XV: artic.edu
A few other delightful attractions that I don’t recall Ferris getting to on his day off, include the Millennium Park, which is right up there with all the great urban oases of this country. To ramp it up a notch it features some pretty futuristic and ‘new millennium’ inspired art, which brings us to ‘Cloud Gate,’ or what locals refer to as the Bean. On the outside it reflects the city of Chicago…
and underneath it reflects all the tourists as they take photos of it…
can you find us?
Michael also got this great shot of G apparently floating into the sky—YES!
Also we have the Shedd Aquarium which is part of Chicago’s gigantic museum campus. This is not just any old aquarium, it is the world’s largest marine mammal habitat. That just means it houses and takes tremendous care of beautiful sea mammals. The dolphin show alone was worth the visit. It takes place inside a giant infinity pool that looks out into the vast Lake Michigan. We also saw a Dora the Explorer 4-D movie, the baby Beluga whale that was just born in August, sharks, sting rays, and penguins. AND it is so very toddler friendly. We did the CityPass, by the way. It was well, well worth it.
the Beluga that swam right up to us
Michael and the little man also hit The Field Museum, which is housed on the museum campus as well. He said it was a GIANT museum of natural history that a Wes Anderson movie should be filmed in immediately. When asked what his favorite part of the Field Museum was, G will tell you—Monkey Skeletons…Monkey Skeletons—Monkey Skeletons. They left quite an impression.
Well, after all of this, by the time this post publishes, we will STILL have another week left in Chicago.
Any tips? Favorite spots? Places you’d like us to go and snap photos of? Please leave your recommendations/requests in the comment section below. Have a great week.
“Uncle S loves to read your blog, but he did say we had to find a way to tell you that it’s LA Maison Loup, not LE Maison Loup,” says my mother.
My heart sinks.
“No that can’t be right,” I say, “I looked it up. Michael said he thought it was LA as well and I specifically told him, ‘No. I looked it up.’”
But Uncle S does have a Masters degree in French Literature.
Oh no.
“Well let’s ask M,” says my mother, “she’ll know.”
M is visiting us from Paris and speaks fluent French, so of course she’ll know. I corner her the second she walks in the door.
“M, if you were to say, ‘The Wolf House’ in French, how would you say it?”
“Ummmm…,” she begins to reply in her fantastic French accented English, “how many wolf is in the house?”
“No, none. Not a house of Wolves. The Wolf House. Like, the Smith House. How would you say the Smith House?”
“La Maison du Smith.”
“No!”
“I’m sorry…yes,” she smiles.
“Well how did I get Le Maison Loup? I must have…oh wait…is the word Loup (wolf) masculine or feminine?”
“Au Francaise, it’s masculine, Le Loup.”
“Oh no. I know what I did. I looked up to see if Loup was masculine or feminine, thinking The Wolf House. Le Loup Maison. But in French the noun comes before the adjective, so I just switched them leaving Le with Loup, but it should be La with Maison. Ack!!!”
Jeff Vanuga
“What is this for?” M asks giggling.
“Oh it’s just the name of my blog. I wanted it to be The Wolf House, but in French. But I translated incorrectly to , Le Maison Loup!”
“Oh it’s so cute,” she smiles, “It’s not French, but it’s cute.”
This causes us all to burst out laughing when my mother says, “That should be the tagline of your blog. It’s not French, but it’s cute.”
So be it, for now anyway. You know I won’t be able to stand the error for too long though right? You know I am so nerdy that it will keep me up at night and one day I will transfer this WHOLE site to a grammatically correct domain name because I’m crazy like that.
Our flight over on Virgin America was so much fun that it passed with a shocking amount of celerity. G & I were totally surprised when they announced we were getting ready to land. Thanks for the tip GW.
We arrived on Tuesday afternoon and it took us until about Friday to get our jet lag sorted and until about Saturday to get the city sorted…but now we have a basic grasp of it all.
A few highlights:
-We are in the Financial District right across the street from Equinox. Michael got us a special deal so we can use the gym just for the time we’re here. THIS, for me, is the greatest and most luxurious thing on the planet. As sort of a single mother these days, the gym doesn’t really happen…it’s just me and a late night Jane Fonda VHS.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
-We are down the street from the fabulous and fancy Ferry Building. This lovely spot encompasses not only the famed Slanted Door, but other various trendy, farm to table outposts. This is extra heavenly because we are here for a month and not about to eat out for every meal so the Ferry Building is going to serve as our grocery store. My first official meal was there at Hog Island Oysters…just a dozen oysters a fresh, delicious salad and a crisp glass of white wine.
-We found a great carousel near the Yerba Buena Gardensand another on the Fisherman’s Wharf. The Wharf, ps, is not my favorite place on the planet as it’s packed with tourists this time of year. I hate to say it, but I may not make it back to see the famed Bushman I’ve been told to hunt down on its docks. Apparently a man hides on the corner behind some tree branches and jumps out to scare people—!! I might have to settle for this video instead.
-We did our first cable car (yes-the Powell line) and our first (and probably last) uphill walk to Lombard Street…the walk was so steep that my achilles tendons ache…but oh the views were so worth it.
And true to form at about 11pm on Friday night the buzzer rang…to reveal none other than Nanny Rigsby. If you need a refresher on Nanny Rigsby, you can see the portions of re-posts* at the bottom of this post.
Nanny has a predictable affinity for authentic Chinese food and since San Fran has a formidable China Town, you’ll know he hunted down what he considered the most authentic place to have our traditional lobster with spring onion, ginger and crispy noodles. Forget about the fact that the whole meal only cost $12.00 (!!!).
*RE-POST—NANNY IN PARIS
By Wednesday evening we were still all pretty tired so we headed to bed early. The boys were sound asleep and I was just brushing my teeth when suddenly…the phone rang. It was the land line in the Paris apartment…and I thought…uh-oh…no one has that number but Michael and his Parisian co-workers…I better grab it just in case.
I quietly whispered (because 2 out of 3 of us were sound asleep in a 500 square foot space)…’hello?’
‘Hullllloooo!’ the English accent blared through the phone, ‘Um, Elizabeth? I think I’m standing right in front of your apartment, but I don’t know for sure’.
I whispered to myself Seinfeldianly…’Rigsby!’
I went to the window and looked out to see Nanny Rigsby himself (surprisingly quite pulled together) standing across the street looking around aimlessly holding a rolling bag. He spotted me and said, ‘Hang up! Hang up! This is costing me a fortune!’
Ah yes. He’d come to visit for only his secretary knows how long. We’ll never get the exact length of his stay out of him because he really doesn’t even know what it is. Did I mention the apartment was 500 square ft and already occupied by 3 people? I did? No matter. The fun would be to see all 6’2” of Nanny Rigsby fit into a bathroom made for elves.
So let’s backtrack a little…Michael’s friend, who we call Nanny Rigsby, is from England. They met in Africa on a horseback riding safari. My my. Nanny was in the bathroom of the Norfolk hotel stealing what the English jauntily refer to as loo rolls, but what is also known as toilet paper. This is all you really need to know about him. No wait…I will also tell you that we refer to him as Nanny Rigsby because he truly, truly loves the baby and we are convinced he flies across the Atlantic via open umbrella.
amazon.com
When we first arrived in Paris, two weeks before Nanny showed up on our door step, apparently Michael called him and gave him our address and phone number. He said he would pop over from England that first weekend…and then we never heard from him again.
No, wait. That’s not true. He left us a message at some point saying he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to make it because there was some sort of crisis and he had to have lunch with the Prime Minister. Then he mumbled out…’no no no I’m sorry, did I just say I was going to have lunch with the Prime Minister?? Ha ha ha!!! Oh no no no… I’m kidding. I didn’t mean that. I meant I’m having dinner with him. Bye!’
Then we never heard from him again. I told Michael I thought he had probably been kidnapped.
But he had not been. There he was at 11pm on a Wednesday night, red faced and blustery sitting on the sofa in our living room in Paris ready to regale us with stories, each one more riveting than the last. We had no choice but to stay up and listen to his adventures. In fact, they were so good, I’ve been banned from retelling them in this blog for security reasons (!?!). But ask us in person…(after you’ve had a thorough background check).
In the morning the baby was nothing but thrilled to see him.
*RE-POST—NANNY IN NYC
I swear to you, on Sunday evening, December 18th, the eve of our moving day…I became almost as ill as I was when I got back from Paris. I’ll spare you the details…but Nanny Rigsby…our new hero and personal savior…went to meet the movers by himself Monday morning at storage and oversaw the whole move.
He said, ‘I’m British. I love telling people what to do. I’m born and bred for it really.’
I’m not sure how I’ll ever repay him, or any one of our amazing friends and family who came through for us during this weird, perfect storm of 2011.
Monday afternoon, when I finally dragged my feverish, nauseous self out of Jane (after cleaning, packing and sorting out the baby) I got to the new place and this is what it looked like…
But by Tuesday evening, we (even though I had eaten nothing but applesauce) had it looking like this…he did ALL of the Christmas decorating.
The bedrooms, however, still looked like this…
If you were wondering if that photo above is of a life size cut-out of Michael, you would be correct. It is. And if you were also thinking…did the movers stop and take pictures of each other with their arms around said cut-out? They did.
Rigsby has a fantastically bizarre obsession with Chinatown. So on Friday, before he left I told him I would take him to the restaurant of his choosing downtown. So of course he leads me down to some crazy place that I couldn’t even find again if I tried. It had no sign and just a couple of escalators heading up to nowhere.
When you got to the top of the escalators you were let out into a room capable of seating 1200 people. It was ridiculous. 1200 people? It was like 3 city blocks long. There were women with carts pushing around soup and dim sum and boiled chicken’s feet. You would take something and they would mark it off on your bill. We must had had 25 different things. When the bill came it was only $30.00. Classic Nanny Rigsby.
This is my first post since I am no longer a vagabond.
During our year of displacement, I kept friends and family updated on our whereabouts via blogging on a site called The Homeless Os.
I discovered I enjoyed blogging so much, that I decided to continue even after we had a home, but it seemed like bad luck to stay under the name The Homeless Os.
So I came up with La Maison Loup and moved all the posts from The Homeless Os over here, just as a reminder of how far we’ve come.
I am not French.
My maiden name is Wolf and every good domain name with the word Wolf in it was taken.
BUT-we did get to spend some time in Paris this summer (click on The Travel Loup Category if you’re curious) and it’s still with me…so Loup is the French word for Wolf.
My husband and I really thought about a good blog name and came up with InTheLoup.com. We thought it was so clever. ‘In the Loop!’ we laughed. ‘It’s a double entendre! It sounds like, stay in the loop, in English, but means Wolf in French! HaHaHa! How brilliant!’
But of course, if you pronounce the word Loup properly, it is pronounced Loo. So that would be…IntheLoo…dot com.
And while that title still seemed very internationale encompassing the French word for Wolf AND the British term for Toilet, I thought better of it.
Triple entendres seem ominous and I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot. So I scooped up the available domain, LeMaisonLoup, or The House of Wolf and here we are.
I can see why some people might get addicted to a sort of fast paced, highs and lows type of life style. Crushing disappointments, dizzying successes, all in the matter of one hour…it certainly makes you feel like you’re alive I’ll tell you that. But I honestly think this year has been a little extreme now, don’t you? Did someone sign us up for a year long stint of Survivor Manhattan? Candid Camera? Because this week there have been moments where I’ve felt as if we were on both.
But nevermind all that…it’s Christmas time.
And since we still do not have an apartment (I will not even write down what happened with the apartment-I am too superstitious-I will tell you this-it aged me), Uncle T has offered for us to go back to Jane until December 20th (I mean…that is just so sweet). But there is a TWO night gap where Lady Wolf and Child have no place to stay (Peter’s place is being painted), so I decided to cash in some Amex points and head over the Blue Moon Hotel on Orchard Street.
Grandma Harriet always says: it is an ill wind that blows no good.
So dear Reader, let’s look at the good:
~The Blue Moon Hotel where we stayed for 2 nights was adorable, it’s a boutique hotel where we stayed in the Burns & Allen room. This was right next door to the Abbot and Costello room. (?!?)
~The baby and I had the luxury of sampling all the cute restaurants and bakeries the Lower East Side has to offer. Schiller’s Liquor Bar—don’t let the name fool you…it’s a French Bistro from the creator of Balthazar Restaurant and Pastis. Babycakes NYC, the cute vegan bake shop. DOUGHNUT PLANT, which has fancy donuts. They are soo soo soo soo good. Jin, the sushi restaurant where we went for happy hour. All rolls $3!! Yum.
~Once we got to Jane, I found it much more enjoyable to be there not spending my time with my cheek on the cool, hard tile of the bathroom floor due to my bizarre Parisian illness.
~I found my Christmas spirit. Friday, I was a grinchy grinchy grinch grinch grinch. Christmas was cancelled for 2011. But then I took the baby for a little walk in the West Village. And nothing will get you into the Christmas Spirit like Santa Con.
This is one day in December where a staggering amount of people wearing Santa costumes drink in bars all day and stagger around. It’s horrifying. BUT it made me feel better somehow so I decided to buck up and buy a fat little Christmas Tree and some soft little ornaments.
~Most importantly, Dearest Readers—by this time next week we will have an address. Believe it, for it is true. Please hold on to your Christmas Cards for me. I want them!
This was a kind of a dreary week that turned on a dime thanks to Wolverine. Michael came home late Sunday night to spend Monday and Tuesday with us before heading back to DC.
We stopped at (hopefully) our new apartment to see if there was a lease for us to sign or something to make this whole thing official. They said they hoped they’d be done by the first of November. Great. We have Jacques’ until November 15th. Should we try to extend that? ‘No,’ they said, ‘it will be done by the 15th.’
Great.I’m too nervous to get excited yet.
Michael also wanted to be there for the baby’s 18 month check up, which was most unpleasant. 3 shots and a blood test for lead levels. Ah yes. Remember those? It seems so long ago doesn’t it? That’s because it was. It is not lost on me that this is the baby’s 18 month check up. He was diagnosed with lead poisoning at 12 months. That means we left our apartment 6 months ago and never looked back.
Needless to say, he did not handle this check up well…because, why would he? Plus we got two pieces of annoying news. 1-His lead levels were at seven three months ago. Now they are six. Six? Unacceptable. However…everyone says it’s fine, it’s just exposure (>10 is poisoning), have him tested again in 3 months. And I’m sure it is fine, but I would like his levels to be below 3…today.
So again, we wait.
The second thing is that the baby was speaking. Now he’s not. The Pediatrician wants Early Intervention to come and evaluate him. She said to forget about the lead (how?), it’s not that, he might be having trouble creating full words with the muscles of his mouth. Early Intervention will check just to be sure and of course it could also just be nothing.
I won’t sleep for a month of course.
But right after we received this news, a friend sent me a text that said, ‘Get a sitter we’re going to see Hugh Jackman – Back on Broadway!’ Just thinking about it now makes me go
‘Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!’
This friend is of very sound judgement, I do anything she tells me to do.
Seven years ago Hugh Jackman did this show, The Boy from Oz that people said was so amazing they saw it multiple times. In fact, he was so good that when he was out for a week, they just cancelled the show all together rather than giving him an understudy. We’re talking about Wolverine. I only know Hugh Jackman from the X-Men movies and he was great, but I just never made it to see him play Peter Allen.
But then I saw him host the Tony Awards and I thought, ‘Wow. He is amazing.’ I had no idea how talented he was. And to my husband’s eye, he was apparently moving his feet to one rhythm, his arms to another and his voice was following another. Which doesn’t make any sense but clearly sounds very hard to do. Plus I’ve heard he loves loves loves all the talented musicians and dancers on Broadway and feels honored to perform with them…not the other way around, plus he’s really charming, so sign me up already.
Well, dear Reader, my report is as follows…I am not a, ‘jump up and down and dance all around’ kind of lady when I’m at the theatre, but I will tell you that Hugh Jackman is so charming, and so talented, the whole audience did absolutely everything he told them to do. If he had told us all to go out into the street and strip down to our skivvies, I think we all would have done it.
Not to mention that my dear friend surprised me with second row seats on the aisle!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!
The two seats in front of us were empty so when Mr. Jackman came down off the stage to sing in the audience (!!!!!) he got on his knees in front of my friend, held her hand, looked her right in the eyes and sang his heart out. I just held onto her arm and squealed like a 15 year old girl.
hughjackmanonbroadway.com
Anyway…he must have bad breath or something…anything. There has to something wrong with him. There was a woman in the front row, who let’s just say was maybe a little too enthusiastic. He didn’t care. He hugged and kissed her and tapped her head with maracas. She must’ve worked hard to get those front row, center tickets. He was going to be sure she wasn’t disappointed.
He kept yelling offstage to get the baseball scores for the men in the audience. He said he knew they were only there because their wives made them come. He pulled a woman in her 60s from the audience and brought her up on stage to sing with him. After the show we all told her how amazing she was and she replied all in one breath,
‘I don’t know what happened! What did I do? My kids will never believe me. What do I do? Never wash my hands again? Freeze dry this outfit?’
I think she was in shock.
And can I also just say (and then I’ll stop with the Hugh Jackman, I promise), he pointed out his two dancers who were having their Broadway debut in his show. He applauded his conductor, his drummer, his pianist, his guitar player…well you get the picture. He told us how lucky we were to get to hear them play. And he was right.
AND GET THIS!!! They are filming a movie version of Les Miserables and Hugh Jackman is playing the lead, Jean Valjean.
Shut the front door.
After the show we were going to sneak backstage to say ‘hello’ to three of the musicians who are colleagues of my husband’s (I was feeling a little shy about this, but my husband insisted I do it). When we got out of the theatre though it was madness. Madness. You couldn’t get anywhere near the stage door. There were policemen and caution tape like the President was in town.
If you’re not sick of Hugh yet, you can click right here to see a little rehearsal video…
To round out the week, a girlfriend took me to some Soho Art Galleries. This is her area of expertise as her mother is an art appraiser. She offered to teach me a little, to help me develop my own educated taste. How lovely. Of the several galleries we went to that day, these are the paintings that stuck with me.
Of course these beautiful oil paintings of Paris views by Claude LAZAR
You would think all of this culture and entertainment would have pushed all my worries about the baby right out the window. Well of course we all know it didn’t. Oh Mr. Jackman came close didn’t he? But my dear and heroically honest friend Leigh posted some insight this week on her blog, in case i’m gone, that comes at a good time.
Worry doesn’t take away tomorrow’s troubles; it just takes away today’s peace.
While I did spend 15 of our 18 days at Jane in a hazy fog of fever and hunger, we did manage to do a little exploring on the remaining 3.
After the doctor ran tests he gave me Cipro. That’s what they give you when you have anthrax. !! So…you can pretty much imagine how it shut my system right down. The good news was that all the tests showed I was a very healthy woman. I just probably ingested a mean bacteria or parasite (parasite?).
‘Can you tell me the last time you ate before you felt sick?’ he asked.
I can! It was the meal I had before I went to Victor Hugo’s house.
Victor Hugo.
mtholyoke.edu
Little did I know that while I was enjoying my last lunch in Paris, consumed with heady thoughts of somehow being intertwined with Victor Hugo’s life, he was putting me in my place by unleashing a legion of French bacteria on my tummy to make me les miserables. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeze! Soooorrrrrry Victor Hugo.
Here is a photo of the The French Bug in my tummy—
he sort of looks like Victor Hugo doesn’t he? Ok, maybe more like Salvador Dalí.
raredaliartandbooks
I told the doctor I couldn’t possibly be that healthy, I have been sick once a month, every month since last October. He said, ‘Well are you abnormally stressed?’
Who me? Nooooo! Don’t be silly.
But let’s look at the fun things that happened down at Jane–
The Playground
Grammy (who marvelously came to help) took the baby over to a playground. If you remember, the Parisian children were adorable and lovely at the playgrounds. Here in the West Village there were 2 boys of about 5 playing in the sandbox with a million toys. The baby waddled over and the 2 boys gathered up everything they could fit into their little arms and cried, ‘BAAAAAABY!!!’ Then they ran to the other side of the sandbox. Completely unfazed, the baby would waddle over to them again and the same thing would happen, ‘BAAAAABY!!!’ Finally they asked Grammy, ‘Why does that baby keep following us?’ Grammy just shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know.’
I took the baby for a walk one day on my favorite street in New York, Perry street. It’s an idyllic old street with beautiful old townhouses. As we walked I noticed a group of people standing in front of a stoop getting their photos taken one by one. There was a chain across the stoop and a sign that read,
‘Please no photographs on the stoop. Be respectful, this is someone’s home.’
Well, clearly their sign wasn’t having the desired effect, but I wondered why people were stopping there and I thought…’is that where Heath Ledger died?’ Can you believe I thought that? How morbid. But you should see how many people flock to the Dakota to see where John Lennon died. So I had to go find out…I went up to 2 women who didn’t speak English. I think they were Russian. I said, ‘Excuse me, what is this?’ while I pointed to the stoop. ‘Sex and City,’ they both replied with big smiles on their face.
Carrie’s stoop. People were coming down to Perry street to have their photo taken on the stoop that was used in the TV show. Amazing. That is amazing to me. If you google Carrie’s Stoop you will see countless images of young women posed on the stoop in various outfits. I would make fun, but if I were 24 and with Dru, I would go get my picture taken on that stoop too. Actually, I wouldn’t.
A Haircut
I got a haircut that was supposed to look like this…
but instead looks like this…it’s not quite right is it? Or maybe I just want to look like Cate Blanchette.
I really like the Chelsea Market a lot. It’s been around for ages and it has a great many specialty shops and lots of ‘farm to table’ happening. I love this kind of thing, this is my kind of thing, my kind of people. But when I went there with the baby in the stroller just to get more bananas, I was so surprised by how crank-a-liciously mean and miserable everyone was. I had a baby for heaven’s sake, not a rabid, wild boar in a stroller. But my goodness people COULD NOT be bothered. They didn’t hold the door, they were annoyed by the stroller and would block my way so I couldn’t get by with it, they would make these loud, heavy sighs when I said excuse me to pass them. The baby’s big, blue eyes did nothing…NOTHING! His powers of good were useless against the evil forces of the Chelsea Market.
A few days later Michael took him down there and when he got back he said, ‘have you been to the Chelsea Market yet? Everyone there is so cranky!‘
A Birthday Dinner
We went to Le Pescadeux for a dear friend’s birthday and it was also my first, solid meal in just about 2 weeks. 2 weeks!! And do you know what I had? Oysters. And they were delicious. Le Pescadeux is in SoHo and they serve French Canadian Sea Food. So as you can see, I was clearly taking a risk. But you’ve got to get back on the horse sometime. It was a lovely evening.
September 1, we were back in New York and still homeless.
We’ll fast forward through the details of my rather intense illness contracted in Paris, but played out in New York.
I will say the sickness I had mildly haunted me on the airplane, but did not stop Michael and I from basking in the glow of his new job or from day dreaming about a castle in the clouds.
By the time we got back to NYC I had not had anything to eat and barely a sip of water in close to 48 hours. I passed out face first to sleep off my jet lag and thought I would wake refreshed and hungry. Instead I woke up and decided I needed to get to a hospital. When you’re so thirsty that your dreams are filled with a longing for an icy cold saline drip…it’s probably time to go get one.
Fast forward to the end of the week. I was back from the hospital diagnosed with a possible food borne illness, on the lookout for signs of e coli and only allowed to eat Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast. The B.R.A.T. diet.
At some point during our Parisian adventures, Uncle T offered for us to stay at his beautiful home away from home on Jane Street in the West Village. This was incredibly sweet of him. I had lived in the West Village on Christopher street for a year or so just before 9/11. I loved it, but it was very different now than it was 10 years ago. So I looked forward to 18 exploratory days there. After that we weren’t sure where we were going. Would we go on tour with Michael? Would we move into an apartment on the Upper West Side? Either option felt delightful to me.
I was awake on Saturday morning at 5 am—I love jet lag in this direction. The early morning and I are sworn enemies and traveling west on an airplane is the only way I’ve ever beaten her. The boys were still asleep so I tiptoed out to T’s breakfast table that looks out on Greenwich Street. I watched the early morning light while I contemplated the complex question of pedia-lite or applesauce?
Before I made my decision Michael quietly came in and sat across the table from me.
‘Hi,’ I smiled.
‘Hi kid,’ he did not smile back, ‘I have to tell you something.’
‘OK’
‘Negotiations for my new job have begun.’
Uggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
There is nothing I hate more than negotiating. All the men in my life LOVE it, LIVE for it even. My father has names for his favorite negotiating techniques. My husband will haggle with a street vendor. My grandfather would TORTURE a salesman for hours over the price of a snowmobile helmet, leaving me with nothing to do but memorize all the labels on the motor oil containers.
So why was Michael bringing up negotiations with me at all? Because depending on how the job shook out, it would determine whether the baby and I would join him on the road or try to find our own apartment in NYC. Negotiations can happen fast or they can take WEEKS.
So in my weakened state I would have to promise to patiently await our fate without any drama or nervous breakdowns or fits of tears.
One of my favorite episodes of 30 Rock is called Negotiation Day. In it, Jack loved to negotiate new contracts so much that any day there was a new negotiation to be had, he would wake up at 430am due to his overwhelming excitement. Why couldn’t I be more like Jack Donaghy? I could, I would!
Come back in time with me for a moment won’t you??
