Your Taste

The blog is back.

I have missed blogging, but there was a great need to be in a very filthy apartment...the New York apartment that is...cleaning out the remains of pigeons...including a nest by the heater.

I didn’t want to have my laptop in that environment, but now it’s a sparkling clean place, soon to be painted, and the blog should continue sans interruption in the future.

The excitement of getting a second place to live, and that second place being New York City, is enough to make any mid-life crisis abate.

The closing went smoothly. It was hilarious. All these lawyers out in the FBI building in Queens (Kew Gardens). There we all were, signing wads of paper. I have no idea where any of it went. Though I did receive my proprietary lease. The building we were in gets more bomb scares than any other place in Queens.

I saw Rufus Wainwright at the Beacon with my sister and brother-in-law. He was amazing. A little croaky. The sound system was not good.

But mostly, it was all just cleaning and cleaning and spackling and moving things around.

Adam came for the weekend and he was just as excited as I was. We ate at an amazing Peruvian restaurant on 37th Avenue around 86th street.
INTI RAYMI

All the electrical outlets have been changed. The gas is turned on. Megan made us little drapes from an old sheet. A pot of flowers sat on the windowsill.

On the last day I was in New York, I took the F train to 23rd and 6th Avenue. Did you know there is a Home Depot right there? Odd, yet so comforting and useful. I stole the rubber bottom to a leg from one of the step stools because the one we bought at the Home Depot in Queens was missing one. And you know how much easier it is to steal the little rubber thing than it is to lug the whole ladder back. Call me a pig, but do it in the name of domestic peace.

After Home Depot and poking around ABC Carpet and the Murphy Bed Center, I had a tuna wrap at Your Taste on 23rd and 6th. It’s just a ramped up Starbucks. At the counter facing out the window, a lovely older woman sat next to me and we were both mesmerized by the humanity streaming by. She was eating chicken salad on pumpernickel.

We got to talking. She’s an empty nester. And she’s a builder. And she lives in Fairfield, CT. Her husband works on Wall Street. And she just has to come into the city a couple times each week just to see the people. We talked about what we do. She was very excited that I was a writer. “It’s all about being creative and putting it out there. Good for you!” But I was even more excited when she told me that she built eco homes. At first, I thought this woman might be conservative since she was a builder and her husband works on Wall Street (Aren’t these wild times, always looking to see what camp someone is in?)--- and ultimately, I am not sure where she is politically, even with her eco homes. But her sloppy makeup and her open demeanor suggested just left of center.

As we were leaving and we shook arms (you know, when you get so happy that a hand shake isn’t enough and you have to grab the arm of the person and they do the same thing back in an arm to arm delight-hold?)—and she said about her eco homes, “Everyone builds these big homes in Utah and they can’t heat them. Well, we are building them but we are covering every single home with solar panels. This is what we do. Fuck the Arabs. We’ll do it without them.”

She told me her name, but I forget it now.