Paper Towels
Unfortunately this weekend just slipped away amidst some family crisis, laundry, spring cleaning and doing my taxes. So now it’s Sunday evening, I’m expecting a guest for dinner and so f0r the last hour and a half I have been scurrying around the kitchen and dining room like a crazy person. I actually employed Peter to help me and that’s something I rarely do but boy oh boy I was off schedule – the damn taxes AND THEY’RE NOT EVEN DONE YET!
Friday I literally spent the entire day on the phone and was emotionally drained and exhausted by 5pm. We just ordered-in some Chinese food and I finished paying the first of the month bills. Then I got some kind of second wind and stayed up until 2am watching all the commercial tv shows that I had DVR‘d for my late night viewing when he who shall not be named relinquishes the remote and retires to the bedroom to continue watching any movie that’s on TCM.
Saturday morning I was dragging and spent a lot of time on the computer playing Words With Friends and Scrabble and looking for some stuff I want to find on Ebay. It was lovely not getting dressed and just sitting around. However, I had promised myself that either Saturday or Sunday would be devoted to getting the income tax in order to ship off to the accountant and also to do some cleaning. Really the level of dust in the apartment was appalling. Anyone who knows us, knows that to dust this apartment is a MAJOR event. Actually I was more washing down and wiping down than dusting – that’s how bad things had gotten. Me and my Windex and paper towels; Cleaning the vintage radios, wiping off the hood ornaments, washing the grime off vases, lamps and every tchotcha on the living room shelves. And I polished all the wood furniture with lemon oil because everything looks dried out to me after this everlasting hot-air-heated winter! All of this industriousness was certainly causing a riff in the household; Well one of us seems to have endless tasks and the other person is kind of whining that there’s no time when we can be together BECAUSE I’m always working!!! REALLY now! I managed to do a couple of shelves in bedroom, none in the den and the day was pretty much gone. It had been a lovely sunny day and I understood why my spouse wanted to leave the house and get outside but when he said let’s walk up to Madison Avenue and go into some galleries, I couldn’t imagine doing that at all. First of all I didn’t want to be dress up much to be on Madison so to appease my poor neglected spouse I suggested we head off to the Met to see some exhibits we wanted to catch before they closed. That put a smile on his face. It was good to get out although it was ridiculously windy and my knees and ankles hurt – not the best foot forward to go to a museum.
But off we did go and although every step hurt in some place or another, we managed to see the Metropolitan Vanities, the French Marville photography exhibition of the Paris that used to be. I was unaware that the Paris of the 1920’s was destroyed and the Paris that we know today with its wide boulevards and beautiful buildings was designed by Hauseman and built. We should have looked at the map as to where the exhibitions we wanted to see, were because the way we did it, we managed to crisscross the museum twice. If you’ve never been to the Met, let me tell you that’s a lot of walking. I wanted to see the Western Bronzes in the new American Wing so spent some time looking at the great sculptures of Remington and Solomon Borglum.
That was as much walking as I wanted to do especially since those 2 Extra Strength Tylenols had not done their job! We stopped at Fairway on the way home and picked up a roast chicken and a baguette for supper and some ingredients for Sunday’s dinner. Knowing I had work to do, I had planned ahead and defrosted a quart of pea soup I had made a couple of weeks ago. Pea soup, chicken, bread and salad was the perfect Saturday night supper.
Although I went to bed early and fell asleep during Angels in the Outfield, when I woke up this morning, I still didn’t feel really refreshed and dreaded putting the income taxes together. Oy what a horrible task. Seriously I spent most of the afternoon calculating dinners, taxis, memberships and charitable deductions. In fact I spent so much time making notes and adjustments that all of sudden it 4:45pm and I had to shower and change AND COOK for my dinner guest who was due to arrive at 6:30pm.
Well, when I started this blog it was during the time I was awaiting the arrival of my dinner guest. Peter assured me she would be at least 15 minutes late; By the time it was 7:25pm I wondered if she thought I had said 7:30pm. THEN the light bulb went off and I said to Peter, “I wonder where she is, she hasn’t called, God, I hope she didn’t email me” I looked at my phone and there was an email from 11:15am from her asking me what my address was. Of course I didn’t see that one or hear it come in as I was knee deep in receipts. There was another one at 6:15pm saying she was walking out the door and by the way, what is my address? OH BOY! I was cooking like a madwoman at 6:15pm! GENERATION GAP! We’re wondering why we haven’t heard from her and she’s sitting home because she can’t find any emails from me, can’t find my business card and of course since she’s under 40, the idea of calling information and assuming we might be one of the few relics that still have a land line, never entered her mind! So we called her and Peter scolded her because he just doesn’t get that they communicate almost solely through electronic messaging and hardly ever use their phones to actually talk!
But since she showed up bearing flowers and is as much fun to be with as ever, all was well within minutes. It turned out to a witty conversational evening and the food wasn’t too bad either! Just for the record, I made Chicken Paprikash, Steamed Asparagus and my new favorite salad of Arugula, Farro, Tomatoes and Olives. The recipe for this great dinner party salad is in my blog post; https://pbenjay.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/farro-and-arugula-salad-tasty-tidbits-tuesday/.
We had a lovely evening playing with the old Edison phonograph and showing off the portable record player we’ve taken to Central Park picnics and talking about old movies and new! AW is a kindred spirit, we hope to see her again soon…maybe we’ll catch her stand-up comedy act!
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