Catching Up: Spring Break & Easter Sunday

Figgy and me on Easter Sunday with Sis's sweet dog, Galena, aka Little Professor. 🍒🌸

Sorry to scrunch this all together in one post, but it's a constant push-pull. Do I have time to blog, which I love and miss, or should I Swiffer the dirty kitchen floor, feed the pansies and perennials in the garden, take a walk or send out story pitches? 

Load the dishwasher so I'm set up in a clean kitchen to cook another healthy meal or wait for Dan to get back and wade through that full counter and sink? (I'm opting for the latter today. But keeping up with an organized, usable kitchen cycle also encourages Punch, who enjoys cooking, with and without friends, including code name Romeo.) Yesterday I made a broccoli Cheddar quiche and still haven't cleaned up. If I have an assignment, I do focus on that first and foremost. After all, an editor is waiting on the other end. But in between, things get murkier.

Last week (April 14 to 18, including Good Friday) was Punch's high school spring break. It was Dan's idea to spend a couple of nights in a nice/splurge hotel in the city, where we could go to a Broadway show, see NYC sights on foot and P and I could get spa treatments. We took the NJ Transit train in and out of NYC from Montclair and the round trip cost (for each senior! age 62 and up) is only $8.10!!!! It was more comfortable than a crowded airplane, and the ride is under an hour. We enjoyed facials and pampering, and Dan and I saw "Oh, Mary!" on Broadway. Lots of laughs and wit, period details and a clever twist on Lincoln-era history. Cole Escola, 38, born in Clatskanie, Oregon, wrote and stars in the play. They are gifted.

Back in Montclair at 11:30 a.m. Easter Mass, I saw a single, beautiful white flowering branch on the altar. (My true friends at Bartlett's Greenhouses & Florist, a 100-year-old (+) family business in Clifton, do the Saint Cassian's flowers.) I saw pretty pink fashions on women--a mom and wife in flowy, taffy pink pants, the hems pooling over her high heels. A twenty something, with her boyfriend, wore an expensive sweater with subtle pinks and golds in the weave. Her brunette hair had a few copper highlights from the sun. I didn't spot a single Easter bonnet, but maybe I just missed them. I arrived late and didn't get a seat. Being old*, I had to go downstairs and sit a bit because unlike most Sunday Masses, Easter Mass was long, well over an hour. A long time to stand in heels. I liked the priest's white and gold vestment, the little girls in floral dresses, their well-dressed, well-behaved and attractive young parents, Dads in sweater vests, good shoes. I liked it all, that slice of Catholic life on a happy occasion. I thought of my own parents, how it must have been to bring four children to church. Wow.

Two nights and three days in a NYC hotel. Love that blue sofa.

I felt like we had a NYC studio apt. for that short time. Sunset was pretty. 

But I couldn't sleep the first night, Sunday. Trucks backing up, brakes screeching all night. 

Sanitation trucks? Mail trucks? I was up til 4:30 a.m. The second night, I slept like a baby.

 

Code name Romeo, Punch and Punch's friend in hotel room, 19th floor.

The friends bussed in and joined for one night. We had a suite.

Breakfast was included in the room rate. The lattes were everything I hoped for.

Sis and me on Easter, Branch Brook Park cherry blossom trees. 🍒🌸🌸

Now I'm back and I feel refreshed. And glad to have blogged again.

*I say I'm old in jest. I may be 64 but I feel like I'm 40. I don't feel old except when I acknowledge signs of old personhood, such as having to pee more often; owning deep frown lines and sun spots; and occasionally forgetting someone's name or an experience. Oh, and I like to be in bed by 10 p.m. latest, earlier if possible.