Upper west side special of the week

If you know anything about me, you'll know that I'm on the internet every night looking for Manhattan real estate. The apartment above is one room, one closet and, as you can see a half-fridge and a cupboard badly nailed to the wall. The bathroom is out in the hall and is shared with several other people. This apartment is on West 88th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Ave. It's a thousand dollars a month.

West 88th and Central Park West is a fine address, but how much is one willing to sacrifice (if you're poor like me) to live at such a fine address? I have looked carefully at the photos and I figure this room is twice the width of the hallway that extends between my kitchen and the garage, and perhaps the same length. I'm guessing this room is six by ten. Barely six by ten.

I'm not sure a single bed fits across the width of this room like under that window, for example.

In fact, it looks like the room narrows down to the window, unless the window is much larger than it seems.

If I were renting this apartment, I would ask that they remove the fridge and the cupboard. They take up far too much space, and I would eat out and keep some fruit and crackers around.

That is if I could walk up and down the four stories of stairs. It's not an elevator building.

It IS sunny. If you stand in the window.

Festival of Trees

You should all attend the Salt Lake City Festival of Trees and make your way to Aisle A where Sam and Sarah's tree is displayed. The tree honors Lucy Gladys who lived for four months in Primary Children's Hospital in 2004. Sarah has designed a new tree every year for six years and they have all been fabulous. This year may be my favorite ever. Mark Eaton bought it for his restaurant "Tuscany," where it will be displayed after this weekend.

They are holding Elliot and Louis, Lucy's younger brothers.

All donations from food sales, tickets, tree and wreathe sales go to Primary Children's Hospital. It's a great outing.

Murgatroyd and me

Murgatroyd was bored last Friday and wanted to go to Grandma's house. She is seven. I was on my way out to buy a comfortable pair of shoes, so I took her with me. "Now where do YOU want to go?" I asked her after I'd gotten my shoes.

"Justice," she said. It's a teeny-bopper store. We walked in and everything was 40% off so I bought her a skanky black dress with rhinestones and silver flats.

"I'm glad I came over when you wanted to go shopping," she told me.

We walked to the car. Murgatroyd gets into the back seat, which always surprises me. She seems old enough to be able to sit next to me in the front seat.

I get in the passenger seat in the front.

Murgatroyd says, "Grandma, who's going to drive the car? Your spirit?"

Duh.

Later, Charles her father said, "I told her you're bored here and now you want to go over to Grandma's house to be bored there."

Murgatroyd heard this and said, "Grandma's never boring."

I'll use it for my epitaph.

Feeding ducks on Thanksgiving afternoon.

The only way the day could have been better was to have a sleep-over. Next year!

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

I’m writing this from my kitchen island. I have boiled yams, made a pumpkin-chiffon pie and I’m about to cut up carrots for the Carrot Puffs that I hope will fool my youngest grandchildren into thinking they’re eating dessert. I will cut the ends off the string beans tonight. The table is set with china and silver and yellow flowers. (See the place tag above—Tom did his Photoshop magic with the one card I bought at Target). We bought a high chair for Louis, and a push button Elmo phone that talks back, and a yellow truck that also makes noise of some kind when you thump on it.

Most of my preparations have been for four-year old Elliot, who LOVES to watch movies, especially anything with Thomas the Train in it. So I made him a corner in the upstairs hall with colored pillows, one of them I embroidered with “Elliot’s Corner” on it. There’s a red IKEA table with a TV/VCR on it and a stool that I painted red and blue in case he doesn’t want to sit on the floor. There’s a yellow circle rug, and seven—count them—seven Thomas the Train DVDs.

Maybe, I’m over medicated.

Here’s a few things I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving in no particular order:

1. The boys, their wives, their kids. Who knew it would be so good?

2. Hot hot water whenever I want it.

3. Thank you, Lord, for helping me lose those fifty pounds and keeping them off.

4. Tom

5. Two working cars.

6. Saturdays in the temple

7. Virtual friends on the blogosphere

8. Anne’s German “parents,” Herbert and Josa, who love her like we do.

9. My writers’ group.

10. The anticipation of 10-days in NYC over the holidays.

So what are you thankful for today? And if something went terribly wrong, I’d really like to hear about that too. I love to hear about things going askew, like Rebecca’s horrible cranberry pear pie. Thanksgiving 2009. Sublime or something else?

Tom's Basil Squamous Cell Carcinoma

This morning, Tom awoke and said, “Do I have something on my head?”

I bent reluctantly over him to have a look. I have no stomach for odd skin growths. There was a small, slightly discolored, slightly raised circle on the top of his head.

“You probably ought to have it checked,” I said, not all that alarmed.

About an hour later, the dermatologist’s office calls to say that Dr. Parkinson has two openings in a couple of hours. Do we want them? I don’t, but Tom goes.

Tom hadn’t phoned them. They called out of the blessed blue. I love that kind of sychronicity.

Later, Tom calls me on the cell, which identifies him as Basilio Filbert—we don’t know why—and tells me it was squamous—rhymes with pus. It’s the second most common skin cancer but is very fast growing, and he found it early.

When he gets home, he looks at Squamous Cell Carconomas on the internet. One old man has about a fourth of his head chopped out. One has a huge one on his anus. A woman has a large one on her vulva. Tom wants me to see all of these photographs, but I won’t have it. He holds up his laptop, “You should see this!”

“Get away from me,” I said.

Years ago, my father wanted to show everyone an MRI of his blocked colon.

“No thanks,” I said.

“No thanks,” said my sister.

“Uhh, no,” said my brother.

“I’d like to see it,” Tom said.

The two of them walked out of the room like guys heading for a beer.

Please note that I spared you an image.

Fiction writer at work--or not

I am cynical of fiction writers who say they LOVE writing. Give me a break.

I love having written. I love having a new book arrive in the post. It hasn't happened often enough.

What I love even more is finding ways to avoid writing: a door needs to be painted today, the shower door needs LimeAway today; I need to file five years worth of paper today. I have a cold. I'm aging. I'm demented. So many reasons not to write.

But today, Monday, the beginning of a new week, I said I would write and exercise. Bonanza goals. And I did both and read a great deal of a Pat Barker Trilogy, REGENERATION, about World War I and the British poets who died in it. I did not make my bed, though.

Back to writing: I sat dutifully and comfortably on the sofa with my lap top and bled out a page of new writing. Then I looked up the definition of "besotted" on the Microsoft dictionary, and then in a moment of fiery self-destruction, I deleted the page I'd written instead of the dictionary page. I jumped up and flayed my limbs and repeated the s-word more times than you care to know.

I ate a Lindt dark chocolate ball.

I thought of that Hemingway novel, where a young writer and his wife travel through Europe staying in small hotels. The protagonist, unlike me, works at his novel every morning. The wife is lovely, young. He is "besotted" by her. It turns out she is also mentally ill and when the novel is almost finished she shreds up the manuscript in a fit of rage.

This is the good part. Hemingway has his writer-protagonist get up the next morning and start the same novel over again. That's what writers do, I remember thinking.

And that's what I did today. I sat down and rewrote the page. So I "have written" and I have "rewritten."

I'm feeling quite smug.