Oh No, We Did Not Need Sleep for This.

The thing with red-eye flights over to the East coast is that you gotta be below 30 for the loss of at least 3 hours not to affect you.  Otherwise, you got to do what you got to do when the hotel you are staying in had no room for you at 7:30 in the morning.  For us, that meant checking our to-do list and figuring out what we can possibly do at our current state - jet lagged, no-sleep, hungry, and really, just plain tired.  Quite naturally, we opted to cross the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan  - a 1.1 miles of a journey that included a chaotic Subway ride that involved the "natives" yelling well-meaning (but yelled) instructions how to do this and that in that damn, antiquated, subway turn-stiles (really - in this century?).  Unfazed by the ride, we headed to the bridge and crossed it with other tourists, murderous commuters on bike, joggers, wedding parties, artists peddling their bridge pictures, and a motley crew of others that looked like they should not be on a bridge or anything that one can jump off from.  When we reached Manhattan, I rewarded myself with Belgian waffles and incredibly scorching hot coffee from a food truck by the City Hall.  Alaia waited until we got to Chinatown for some pork buns - two kinds no less - crispy and not crispy.  Along the way, we had close encounters with folks in uniform black jackets (knock-off North Face) whispering "Gucci, Chloe, LV bags" to every passer-by.  By the time 1 pm came around - both of us clearly reached the end of our line.  The subway ride back to Brooklyn was long and un-touristy.  Thankfully, our room was finally ready and we slept until 5 pm at which time Alaia woke up with a raging "toothache" so we had to insert "pharmacy" in our go-to list.  It was the only way our NYC trip could have started - it could only go bumpier after that.  Day 2 next.

Twenty One Years Ago, You Came To Our Lives

One and Two and Counting

Twenty One Years Later...

This blog has been quiet lately but something loud and proud happened lately in our lives - our daughter turned 21!   How did that happen so fast?  Surely, all things considered, parenting a child into a bonafide adult should rank high up there like earning a PhD or something- one that took 21 years to finish?  So, to celebrate her first adult birthday and my parenting feat - we chose to take a trip to a place that supposedly never sleeps - perfect for a girl who once racked up over 5000 minutes of talk time on her phone - in a single billing period!  The trip was short and sweet and being only four days - was decidedly frenetic.  And as it had always been since day one of this girl's life - it was a wild, crazy and exhausting ride but seriously fun and memorable.  This turning to Twenty One was surely a milestone not only for her, but for me as well - one that she gleefully marked acting like a boss in New York City and with me trying mightily to boss her around while I still could.