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What Inspired Me: September 26

  • Flipsigi- Dan Dan Noodles and DK Burger
  • Banksy
  • Banksy
  • Banksy
  • Banksy
  • Banksy
  • Banksy
  • Little Italy
  • Rice Ball stuffed with meat- San Gennaro
  • Met- Gallery 129
  • Met- Gallery 130
  • Would you pay 259 cows for this?
  • Would you pay 1/12 of a cow for this?
  • BBG
  • Penny
  • Betty
  • Pizza at Joe&Pat’s- solid pizza
  • As seen in front of Friends Experience
  • Pershing Square
  • Brooklyn Museum
  • 14th St subway Station
  • Banksy exhibit was quite interesting. It’s unauthorized, so I didn’t expect anything to disappear before my eyes, yet I was still sort of hoping… Banksy was the author of the quote in Friday’s blog. It’s not his art per se that is important- it’s his reasoning behind what he chooses to do…
  • Flip Sigi is Philippino fast food- and it’s delicious. The burger has a Longanisa sausage patty on it. Don’t know what it is, but it’s delicious…two words: banana ketchup
  • It was fun to go back to San Gennaro. Our goal is always to find something new at one of the stands- this year a huge, meat filled rice ball. We were not there for the parade or cannoli eating contest.
  • The Relative Value: The Cost of Art in the Northern Renaissance exhibit at the Met is interesting because they explain how things were valued- namely by how many cows it would take to purchase something.
  • I’d never seen Breathless before. Should see for anyone who is interested in film…however….if this was an American classic we would be condemning it as opposed to genuflecting before it. If you are easily offended by sexist behavior, probably not for you to watch…
  • We have completed the Thrillist List of best Pizza- My clear winner is Zazzy’s Pizza. Clearly one of best slices of pizza in NYC- if you ever visit and want a traditional NYC slice- this place should be on your list
  • Dior exhibit amazing!!

Posted on by LA · 32 Comments

Gratitude Saturday- September 25

On Tuesday my Husband worked in the office and then had a business dinner.

Do I need to tell you how grateful I am for these two things?

That evening I binge watched some show called “On the Verge” on Netflix.

It was very mediocre.

I am grateful for very mediocre TV because sometimes you just need to get lost in something that you don’t really care about. Sometimes you just need to veg in front of a screen…

Posted on by LA · 37 Comments

Anything Can Happen Friday: Game Time

I recently read the following:

The idea of blindly obeying orders is perceived by %^&*&$ as an opportunity to avoid responsibility for your own actions. They underlines that it is essential for each of us to make our own decisions and be responsible for them.

  1. When you read “blindly obeying orders”, what does it mean to you? (there are no wrong answers- this is totally opinion)
  2. Can you give an example of someone blindly obeying orders?
  3. Who do you think made this statement? You don’t need to submit an actual name- you can say some characteristic of the type of person who would make this statement

Do not argue at one another about their answers! Everyone is allowed their opinion. Also, be prepared that your answer might contradict the answer of another. Try to grasp why someone’s point of view may be different than yours.

The speaker of the quote will be revealed on Sunday

Posted on by LA · 63 Comments

I Miss You

Pet Peeve time:

I hate it when people ask me if I miss my daughter while she is at college.

What does it mean to miss someone?

Let’s talk a little about me…

I love my daughter very much. I also feel that she loves me very much. When you are secure in the to and fro of a relationship, you don’t really feel the “missing” because it’s just a part of your heart. I don’t really “miss” her because she is always with me in spirit.

I also text/facetime/talk to my daughter almost every day. I know everyone out there is going to have an opinion about this. Some will say I’m not allowing her to spread her wings. Some will say I’m being over protective. Some will be jealous of my relationship. Some will think it’s nice that we connect when we can. For the record: don’t care what anyone thinks- this is how our relationship has evolved up to this point. I’m sure as time goes on it will evolve further, but I’m all for letting things happen organically.

What do we talk about you ask?

Sometimes it’s practical. She texts that she received a package. I call because I’m having trouble resizing a JPEG that I need to attach to something. She asked me to read over an review she wrote for the paper. I give her updates about her grandfather.

Sometimes it’s fun- she calls to tell be about a sorority party. I call to discuss a movie I just saw. We text each other pictures from the Met Gala…

Can you really miss someone you talk to almost everyday?

Chew on that for a moment…

You know why else I don’t completely get this question?

In a world where Zoom took over our lives- do we still need to be physically present with someone in order to not miss them?

I guess if we are discussing pet peeves I must add that I hate Zoom and doing things where I have interactions over a screen with more than one person. What am I saying? Even one person. I can facetime with my daughter because we are easy going about it. I walk around the house, I make tea, I put things away while I am on the phone with my daughter because we just kind of go with the flow. I don’t know how many others would be this easy going about my laissez faire video calls.

Now I know you’ve enjoyed learning about some of the things that I don’t like- but we will return to the original question:

When you say you “miss” someone, what do you mean?

What are the things that make you say you miss them?

What do you miss about them?

When is the last time you told someone that you missed them, and what was the who, what, when, where and how of it all?

Posted on by LA · 74 Comments

Butt, I’m just trying to help…

Imagine a person is coming into the city from the suburbs.

They get to the train station in the city and need to use the rest room.

In the rest room they happen upon a woman who appears homeless. The person is washing their face in the rest room sink. The presumed homeless person is with a child.

Suburban woman exits rest room and tells a station police officer that there is an apparent homeless person in the bathroom with a child.

Suburban woman’s 23 year old son is with her. He becomes mad at his mother for saying something to police. Her response is that when a child is involved she needs to say something.

If you were any of the players in this little drama, what would you do?

Now, because I know that people are going to make assumptions about the woman, in this example, let’s say that the suburban woman is a pussy hat, liberal flag waving sort- this is the person who would burn a MAGA hat if she saw one, and most likely the person in the hat. Son wears the same hat and flag of his Mother.

Does the above fact change your mind or your opinion about anything?

Tell me anything you want about the above scenario:

Posted on by LA · 98 Comments

Special Request

I don’t normally eat fish.

My daughter doesn’t eat beef, chicken or pork.

My Husband doesn’t eat cheese, butter or most dairy.

I know- at this point you’re all thinking- How is it that I’ve never invited LA and her family over to break bread…

We don’t have allergies. We either don’t like the taste or choose not to eat these things.

If you are going to someone’s house, do you volunteer this information, or do you wait to be asked if you have any food issues?

If you find out what your host is making ahead of time, and you know that you don’t like it, do you mention it to them?

For me, unless directly asked “Is there anything that you don’t eat?” I tend to just find something at the meal that I can eat. I don’t make a big deal about what is being served. I don’t want the host to go out of their way to satisfy me. I figure they have enough on their plate.

Do you make food requests of hosts?

Now let’s get a little tricky. If you found out that your host was going to make lobster, or buy expensive steaks, do you tell them not to buy a portion for you, because it is expensive and you know you’re not going to eat it?

How about if you are going to someone’s house, would you ask them to make a certain dish because you like it? (for the record, I don’t mean if my daughter is coming home and asks me to make something special, because I think in some situations it’s OK for a kid to ask their parent to make a “favorite” dish, and most parents are happy to oblige) I’m referring to a less close relationship than parent/child.

If you find out that you are going to someone’s house and find out that they are ordering pizza, do you tell them that pizza is not an appropriate food to serve guests?

When you are going to someone else’s house, should the food be a consideration? Or should the main goal just to be hanging out and spending time together?

Discuss:


Posted on by LA · 73 Comments

The Parent/Adult Child Relationship

I’ve been wondering how to navigate the relationship between my daughter and I as she forges on into adulthood.

As luck would have it, I know someone whose Mom came up to town from Florida last week. As I watched their dynamic, I knew that I had the basis that I needed to start creating a better relationship with my own daughter…

  1. When you arrive at your daughter’s house, get mad that your daughter was working when you got there. Tell her explicitly that she should have been at the front door waiting with literal open arms.
  2. Complain, again, about the “no shoe’s in the house policy” that your daughter has. Repeatedly scoff at the suggestion of house slippers, because house slippers are stupid.
  3. Complain that your grandchildren are at school. What’s more important after all- algebra II or being there for your grandmother
  4. Remind your daughter all the things you did for her while she was growing up
  5. Tell your daughter that she doesn’t treat you with respect
  6. Cry that she treated her own mother so much better and she wants you to treat her as she treated her Mom
  7. start yelling at your daughter because your daughter doesn’t cater to your every whim
  8. Tell your daughter that she’s a despicable spoiled brat
  9. Call your son and tell him that she can’t stand his sister and she has to leave that very moment because she can’t spend another minute in the house
  10. Curse at your son because he dares to say that he will call her a car service- a good son would rent a car and drive over and pick up his Mother
  11. Remind both your children that they don’t respect you
  12. Tell your children about how you worked to support them and without her you would have nothing
  13. Spend so much time talking about a gift that you gave, that the daughter hands you a check for the amount of the gift because no gift is worth it being thrown back in your face a million times
  14. Ask why they treat their Father, her ex, so much better than they treat her, because he was despicable.
  15. Give a birthday toast that doesn’t say anything about your daughter, but tells all the sacrifices that you made for your children

Do you understand why this example showed me exactly how to further my relationship with my daughter?

Parents.

What would we do without them…

Posted on by LA · 10 Comments

What Inspired me: September 19

  • Manhattan Bridge
  • 60 Rivington
  • Scarr’s Pizza
  • BBG
  • BBG
  • Met- Gallery 128
  1. 60 Rivington once housed two synagogues. The building is now owned by an artist who took out some of the bars that made up the Jewish Star, and changed it to look like a camera lens
  2. Our walk was through the Lower East Side. It’s an odd neighborhood- you see lots of buildings that once house Synagogues, which now house other things. The neighborhood, once largely Jewish is now a mix of Chinese immigrants and hipsters (though I loathe to use that word…) We also meandered from neighborhoods where drug deals are done right in front of you, to high end galleries and families playing at parks. This neighborhood kind of gives you everything.
  3. The Alpinist is a decent doc about an alpinist…
  4. Though I did not attend the Met Gala, I did attend the corresponding exhibit. I was underwhelmed…hoping part 2 in May is better
  5. The idea of Biophony was better than the execution- it seemed every time I passed on of the musical groups, they were on a break. While that was a good storyline for Friends, not so good when you are walking around trying to get snippets of music
  6. Wife of a Spy was quite good…good filmmaking
Posted on by LA · 39 Comments

Gratitude Saturday September 18

My Mom does not believe in smart phones. Add to that, her present flip phone is probably ten years old…

There’s about to be an upgrade to the system that cell phones run on, making my Mom’s cell phone obsolete…

As my Mother is not good at tech, and in her mind, this is tech, I had to call her phone provider so they could explain to me what is about to happen, and what she needs to do.

I am grateful to Jan at Consumer Cellular who was exactly what a frustrated daughter needed when asking questions for a parent.

Jan was awesome!

Cheers to the customer service reps who really know how to help you out and figure out the next steps!!

Posted on by LA · 80 Comments

Anything Can Happen Friday: Checking ID

As of September 13, if you want to do something indoors in NYC, you must show proof of vaccination.

There are various apps that one can use to download their information. I chose the one where you take a picture of your card and your id, and it’s easy to slide from one to the other.

How is this working so far?

Technically, we needed to start showing ID as of two weeks ago. 9/13 was the start date for random checks of businesses actually checking ID, and fines to begin for those who don’t comply. So there was a two week window to get the kinks out…

The reality?

I went to the US Open last week. I think I could have displayed my library card for the amount of attention that the attendant paid to looking at it. I guess BJK Tennis Center is largely outdoors, so maybe they felt they didn’t need to be as stringent. Of course, with the threat of rain that evening, the roof closed at about 11pm. I’d say five people did as requested and donned their masks…

But…

Will places that are crowded be less inclined to give a real, hard look at ID?

The Brooklyn Botanic Gift Shop, on the other hand did a quite thorough examination of my ID. I didn’t have the app at that point, but the clerk flipped over both my license and vax card. Looked at me and looked at my picture about ten times. I’ve had physicals were I have received less scrutiny than the amount of attention paid to my ID…

The 19th Street movie theater actually asked to see my actual vax card…apparently the app that is good enough for NYC is not good enough for her… Her reasoning was that it wasn’t a good photo and she couldn’t actually see the info.

The photo that was good enough for every single place I had been that asked for ID…

Really?

I gave her the “Mom Look”.

How hard are you supposed to look at ID?

And you see there lies the problem- are we giving people too much power to randomly deny someone entry to something?

Does it become too easy to say “Access Denied”?

The whole point of checking is to make sure that everyone is vaxxed, and if you have a suspicion that something is not on the up and up, doesn’t the person checking have the right to deny you entry?

So, if you follow that path, are there going to be people that are denied entry to things entirely based on the discretion of some Vax Card bouncer?

This is bound to get really interesting.