The Big 100

This is my 100th post since I started blogging in early February. I think I've blogged every day except one, on Cape Cod, when I couldn't get wireless. I finally did, out in the cold, in the dark, on a bench outside the Hot Chocolate Sparrow, but then couldn't see the keys on my little red laptop.

Just Passing Through
In honor of passing through the portal of 100, below is a list of other doorways I've darkened at least 100 times [in counts as one, out counts as one].

Surprisingly, there aren't that many beyond home, school, work and church--things I've done routinely. That says something about life.

Maybe my memory is failing, but I don't think I've even been to the homes of my closest friends 50 times, or to Sis's apartment in NYC, and I went there a lot. And while I loved walking in Central Park [often with my friend, Madonna] at lunchtime when we worked near there, it wasn't 50 times. [Now if it were virtual homes, aka website addresses like toryburch.com, that would be different. I bet I've knocked and entered there more than 100 times, mostly just to browse, sometimes to buy.]

The 100 List
1. Our gray-shingled house on Bedford Road in Dumont
2. Cars: family's white Ford Falcon, little green Datsun, tan Chevy Nova; my tiny tan Chrysler Champ; our blue Honda Civic, black Volvo wagon, silver Honda CR-V
3. Selzer School, kindergarten
4. St. Mary's Church [first in cute white steepled church, then in giant brick church when white one was demolished and replaced]
5. St. Mary's School [first and second grades in little white building, with nuns; third through eighth in new big brick one without nuns--Sister Agnes, Sister Frances John et al were abruptly called to another parish, like a flock of migrating birds]
6. Dumont High School
7. White's Norge Village Laundromat [first job]
8. Twin-Boro News, Bergenfield [first paying newspaper job]
9. College dorms and buildings
10. Red and white Rutgers campus buses
11. Cooper Dining Hall [ate there and worked there]
12. Voorhees Chapel on campus
13. Daily Targum, Rutgers campus
14. Ocean Grove apartment
15. Catholic church in Bradley Beach [doesn't seem like I went there 50 times, but must have, since I had my apartment at the shore for four years]
16. Apartment [with fire escape, window boxes] that we rented as newlyweds
17. St. Cassian Church [first in little old dark church, now in brighter, more modern one that has cornerstone from first one]
18. Kings supermarket
19. Our little yellow house
20. Woman's Day Magazine, in Times Square, first real job
21. Seventeen Magazine, Third Avenue, East side, second job
22. Good Housekeeping Magazine, near Columbus Circle, third job
23. Sesame Street Parents Magazine, near Lincoln Center, fourth job
24. Strategic Communications Group, Park Avenue South, fifth job
25. Port Authority
26. Penn Station
27. NJ Transit 167 bus, Dumont-NYC
28. DeCamp 66 bus, Montclair-NYC
29. NJ Transit trains, Oradell-Hoboken and Penn Station-Asbury Park
30. "A" subway train
31. No. 6 subway train
32. White house on Wonderstrand Way, Cape Cod
33. Papa's apartment at Sunrise in Cresskill
34. Friend Irene's house? [50 times? Most likely; Irene lived around the block from me and was my closest neighborhood friend. For reference point, just asked H. about his best friend Dan's house, a few houses away from his childhood home in Teaneck. "Did I go to Dan's house fifty times? I went fifty times a day. Seriously. I was there all the time." Love that glimpse of him as a little boy--a loyal friend, a fun lover....and someone whose own home was not always warm and fuzzy.]

This 100th post is a reminder--to shake it up and add more beautiful, nurturing, colorful places to my most-visited list.