Christo's Gates in Central Park

So she was walking through Central Park, enjoying the whole experience of being in New York, and the Christo thing that's going on there at the moment with the Gates, of yellow / orange fabric and all, and a spiffy New Yorker (at least he sounded like one) in a suit approached her and said "Tell me what you think. It's ridiculous isn't it. Honestly, it is, you think so, don't you. All these people dying all over the world, and what's the point of this. The money it cost... when you think about all that's going on ..." holding out his hand towards her, imitating holding a microphone to her face.

Well, she was in fine form, and had been formulating some thoughts about the general air of depression, anxiety and struggle that she was sensing in New York... while also aware that maybe she was creating it since things had been a bit depressing, anxious and also a struggle since she'd arrived in the USA for this trip... So she said "Well, maybe it's just an opportunity to look at the world differently. The installation didn't actually cost the city or the taxpayer anything. And the colour is so warm and happy. Maybe we can look at this and re-think the way the world feels for just a minute. "

The guy wrenched his invisible microphone away faster than a speeding very fast thing. But the words made sense to her! She let me out to have a look at the gates, and honestly, I loved them. Made me feel quite skittish and frivolous! People everywhere... orange flags. It was all good.






And here's a link to more information. http://www.nyc.gov/html/thegates/

New York, New York

She had to go to New York. At the last minute, suddenly aware of how much she had to achieve before this weekend, with the Yard Sale and all, she hesitated and nearly decided to be sensible. After all, the person she was supposed to be meeting there could no longer go... perhaps she should just save her dollars and stay in Provincetown and get everything labelled and sorted ready for the bargainfest on the weekend.

Nah.

She's like that sometimes. A total hedonist, interested only in having fun. But you already know that, right!

So she gets in her car with the Nebraska plates and heads off down Route 6, off the Cape then down various interstates and to New York. As she approached, the weather that had started off cloudy became rainy. Then the rain turned to ice and visibility was down to approximately 5.08 cm (i.e. two inches!). Ahhh, the universals of human existence. Universal truth number 674 - all human beings in charge of vehicles turn into complete morons in the wet. Except Miriam, of course whose driving skills were developed and honed along the ruts of keyline ploughed paddocks in the wilds of East Gippsland.

But seriously folks, it took about seven hours to get to JFK airport, which is ridiculous. And she swears she also left her new(ish) sunglasses in the bloody car - something she discovered when the sun came out the next day. Bugger!

The car rental company had a pet limo driver who turned up to take Miriam into the city and to her hotel. Meanwhile, I was... wait for it... can you guess... I was... IN THE SOCK! But she took me out to take this picture and as you can see, nearly blinded me with the flash. In the photo below, the attractive looking blob with the pointy green hat is me. Life with Miriam. Let me tell you. Never a dull moment. The taxi driver was cute. Ali. Pakistani. They chatted away, chat chat chat about everything from being a moslem to not being a moslem, from Australia to America and back again. They laughed. The cried... well no actually there were no tears. But a great time was had by all. Then she paid him and it was all over. Ahh New York. "New York," said Ali, "never sleeps. And that really gets to me. It drives me crazy, you know?"

on the one day she has to drive...

Normally she can get away with staying at home, except for a teensy little motoring for a couple of miles or less. To be honest, most of the appointments she has to keep here she could walk to, and sometimes does. However, today she had made arrangements to go to Dennis. In this instance, the name of a town, no matter how much it may sound like the name of a bloke. It's the silver-plated stuff you see. She doesn't think it's worth an awful lot, but then again, what would she know. She's taken out the bits that mean something and has a wooden box full of platters and bowls that Robyn used to use to hand out peanuts and suchlike at gallery openings. And one item that nobody can tell her the use for. This (it is about 5 cm high and has no holes except the top opening. Ink well? (one expert already asked says not) It's a mystery!):

Nobody here knows what it is, even the gal down in the town who sells silverplated items and seems to know her stuff. So Miriam is going to take it to Dennis for an opinion on what it is, or actually, she's taking it to Bob, the guy who owns the auction house in Dennis. And she's taking the rest of the stuff to Dennis, or as we said, to Bob, so that he can give her an approximate value for her to put on her inventory that she is preparing for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in her official capacity as executrix. She has her fingers crossed that he makes her an offer, or at least lets her sell it on consignment at the next auction. She doesn't want to bring the stuff home again!

And there's snow. So she's got to sweep her porch and the path. Then walk carefully over to the car (it's in the photo below, aaaaaaaall the way over a car park that looks suddenly very big!!) And then start the car, brush teh snow off. When the car is warm, she will reverse it back over this way and put the silverplate in the trunk and drive off for her exciting adventure! She may need another cup of coffee before leaving.




The main roads will have been salted (not really enough snow to plough, or 'plow' as they say here!) It's pretty. I do admit that. She loves it though. In fact, if you could see her now, she's grinning like an idiot. She can stand for hours in it feeling the little sharp snow crystals hitting her face. I found me a couple of two inch nails in the basement last night. I'm going to knit me a scarf. Humph! I miss the Higgs Boson terribly.

sunny day!

What a gorgeous day today. I made her take me out. She wanted to sit and read and write all day, but -- you should have seen it here!! There's a particular pale blue that winter skies get over here. It's almost silvery. No clouds today.

So we went to the gym. And guess where I was, the whole time. Yes. In the sock.

Then we went into town. We ran into Myra, the next door neighbour. Myra has a shop in town. MG Leather. We sat on the steps on the sun. Myra's the one who took the photo of Miriam holding me on the steps. It was so warm in the sun... about ten degrees above freezing!!! Wow!

MG Leather sells leather pants and vests. Also chaps, and leather underpants. And some adult toys. I'd never been in a shop like that. So Miriam let me out to take a look around. Those dildos look way too big for what I though you used dildos for. I took a fairly close look, as you can see.

I'm still puzzled. It's quite a relief not to have to deal with those sorts of - ahem - issues. Being ceramic and all. But at least today I made a couple of new friends. Mackenzie is the guy holding me up. He also lives next door - he's Myra's roomate.


I met this other guy too. Plastic, I think he said he was made of. Hmm. Not my type really but I figured I should be polite and play the game with the chain and the lumpy trousers. I started to wish I could get back in the sock. Really.

Finally, we left. Miriam got peckish and decided to stop in at the Squealing Pig. It's a place she used to hang out a bit in November. They're nice there. They remembered her. They do a really good split pea soup - and it was on the menu today. So she had a cup of that. I checked it out. Smelt really good! And yes, that is a cup of coffee behind her cup of soup. I guess she's just accepted that coffee is her writing drug. She can't give it up right now...

Then home, via the hardware store where she bought a big bag of birdseed. there are two bird feeders out in the back yard, and we thought it might be nice to attract some birds. But first, we had to dig a path out to the feeders through a couple of feet of snow. I helped.

And here's me having swing on the feeder. Wheeee!!

In case you were wondering about Bif... here's what the lazy sod has been doing for the past three days. Sleeping on a ceramic horse. Sheesh!

does Art live here?

Well, she's not sure if Art lives here, but she's making a big list of all the pictures in the condo, and (with help) assigning an estimated value to each, getting ready to auction them. So it's been pretty boring around here. For me, anyway.

All the pieces need to be cleaned. Here's what she does. She gets a bucket of warm water and after putting her rubber gloves on, she dips a sponge in it then squeezes out as much water as possible. Then she carefully wipes the back of the picture and the frame. If there's glass on the front of the picture, she wipes it down as well. Then she takes a wad of paper towel. Sprays the glass cleaner on it and carefully wipes all the smoke stains off the glass. The stains make the paper towel a nice brown color. Jim, an art expert in town and an associate of Robyn's has been helping Miriam with the art inventory. Here's a picture of him and me and a sculpture of three voluptuous bottoms that Miriam has taken rather a liking to.



We went out later and saw the attorney. Miriam is now officially the executor of the will, with a piece of paper to prove it. Yaaay! The attorney's name is Robin. She hasn't met me yet. I had to stay in the sock. Probably a good thing. Robin has a dog called Toblerone. And yes, it is dark brown and a bit nutty. Some large panting breed. Uggh. The sort of enthusiasm that could just lick the paint off a ceramic bloke with a pointy hat!

sunset on the snowy beach

Can it be true? Yep, that's me down there on the snowy sand, checking that it's real. Cold, wet snow my friends. No doubt about it.



Once we'd got over that, we looked up at the sky and here's what we saw. Wow.

escape...

You'd do the same if she kept putting YOU in a sock...

supermarket update...

The supermarket here is called the Grand Union. Or the GU. Or the Grand Onion. Or sometimes the A&P, which is the brand of supermarket it was before it was a Grand Union. January and February are so quiet here, that the supermarked becomes a meeting place.

Conversation overheard yesterday:
"Why, hello sweetie, you're still wearing the same jacket. I saw you here in that jacket last week!"
"Well, I just got it out again today, you know. It seemed like a cord jacket sort of a day. [yes, it was a cord jacket, funnily enough. I took note of the wind direction, temperature and humidity etc outside later so that I know what a cord jacket type of a day looks like in the future]. So what have you been doing today?"
"Watching television. And you?"
"Watching television. It was driving me crazy so I thought I'd come here and get out of the house for a bit."

Even Miriam, who has only been here a handful of times, runs into people she knows or recognises while cruising the aisles. It's rather pleasant actually. You browse and put things in the basket, then stop and chat with someone and move on to more browsing. Here's my new friend Nancy-Ann, holding me in front of a Mulan DVD display (for some reason). Miriam's known her for a few years and ran into her today near the checkouts. Sorry about the blur - Miriam was talking and photographing at the same time. Imagine.


Each week there are specials and coupons... people sit in their warm houses and cut out coupons for a few cents' discount on this product or that, and then go and purchase that product - and enjoy a social life at the same time! There's an air of gleeful excitement around a shopper with a handful of coupons, waiting for the items to be scanned so that they can thrust the coupons at the checkout chick / bloke and watch dollars and cents come off the final bill.

It's something Miriam definitely needs to work on, I think. She's never been much of a coupon shopper, but you know what they say... when in Rome... I found some scissors in the drawer yesterday. Figured I might help her out and do the coupon thing when she's upstairs cleaning walls tomorrow. Might be a nice surprise for her.

Aside: She had me in the sock yesterday so I wouldn't get chipped by the keys in her handbag (Sheesh!) and I heard her talking to someone about quilting. Do you know, they say 'a scissors' here? As in "I got myself a scissors and I cut myself a coupon". I tell you what, I could feel Miriam twitch through the bag. She was just holding herself in -- admirable self-control. Later, on the way home, she said to me. "Noam, how did that happen? Don't they know that scissors is a plural? Do you hear them say 'an underpants'? I had to admit I had never heard an American say 'an underpants'. "So," said a very agitated Miriam, "why do they say 'a scissors'?" I had no answer of course, so we lapsed into an uncomfortable silence for the rest of the way home. At least she'd had the manners to take me out of the sock before talking to me this time. I think I'll log on later when she's not looking and check that site http://www.worldwidewords.org for an answer to the scissors question.

So yesterday, there was a good special on cocoa. It was $1.99 for a fairly sizeable tin. We saw a few of them at various cash registers. Miriam's getting one tomorrow. It will be an outing.
The other supermarket phenomenon here is the cash register conversation. Individuals working the cash registers actually act like people instead of automatons. Interesting. Miriam nearly fell off her elbow yesterday when she heard the checkout chick say to the customer ahead of me "Wow, alot of junk food today!" The customer's response? "Well, it was all on special." Good point.

Arrival etc.

Of course she was re-packing at the last minute. Col turned up ten minutes early to take her to the airport, and she was still tidying the house up ready for the house-sitters! But anyway we only left ten minutes late – and in the end we all made it, and soon Miriam and Bif and I were winging our way to the US in a Boeing 747-400 with individual television screens and an entertainment system that had to be rebooted three times after take-off from Sydney before it would work. Not that I could watch anything, of course. She had put me inside a sock in her computer bag, and shoved the bag into the overhead bin. While up there Bif and I got to know each other, had a bit of a chat. He's filled with polystyrene balls and I'm made of ceramic. I think we both agreed it was great to compare notes; you know, get another perspective.
Here's a picture of us at the kitchen table in the condo in Provincetown. Bif is the bovine. Not sure about the gender, and from what I can gather, there's no udder and no pizzle. So I'm none the wiser, really!



Anyway, Bif can be handy when I want to see out the back door.


I'm Noam by the way. I used to hang out under the tomatoes in the garden at Kew. Talking to the Higgs Boson and the snails. Oh happy days.

We're all a bit weary. Melbourne, Sydney, Los Angeles, New York. Then on the air train to station C Federation Gardens, into a rental car and on the road. She ended up with mid-size car instead of the compact one she could afford... Nancy, the lady at the counter was a bit lacking in the eyesight department or maybe she gave us the upgrade on purpose. She peered out into the parking lot and said "Take the car in bay 21" Which we did. When we got out there, Del, who seemed to be doing a bit of everything around the National Car Rental office said "That's not the compact car you ordered, that's a mid-size." After a couple of dozen hours of travel, mid-size and compact look pretty much the same to us, I'm afraid. They both drive on roads that lead to beds, for example. But when Miriam said to Del "Just point me to the one I'm supposed to be in then," he said not to worry. "I'll just tell 'em there was something wrong with the other one." OK then. For those who care, we have a Pontiac Grand Am thingy. Gold. With Nebraska plates (I kid you not!)

We had directions to get onto route I-95 (I stands for Interstate) and all went well. Then her highness got hungry, so we stopped at a diner in a town called Fairfield. Sherwood's diner. Owned by some Greeks, who sounded just like Australian Greeks! Is there some sort of accent packing order? If you start with Greek, then learn English, the accent stays Greek, no matter where you learn English? If you start with Tagalog then learn English, the accent sounds American, no matter where you learned English? The menu was full of wonderful things that did not involve fries. Yaay!

Here's a picture of me with the spanakopita and me having a rest on her birthday scarf while she finished her dinner.



Miriam had coffee, despite her vow not to drink the foul stuff. She figured she needed it to stay awake (and guess what, it worked... even hours later, she said, when she really did want to get to sleep) A bit of Greek salad and a wedge of spanakopita and she was getting sleepy so we toddled off 13 minutes up the road to the Fairfield Inn, which had been recommended by the waiter at the diner. Well, it was a place to sleep. And that's all I'll say about that. Snow and ice crunched underfoot as we walked from the car. The wind bit. There's a smell about snowy winter – it’s like the smell that comes out of the back end of a laser printer, only cold. Don't believe me? Well, it's true, I tell you. The air is dryer, too. It makes your nostrils crack and Miriam's nose has been bleeding since she landed. Sickening. She should get some nostrils like mine. You don't see me getting a blood nose, do you?

Fairfield Inn.

Miriam couldn't settle. The heater was noisy, the air was dry, her nose was giving her jip and the water from the tap tasted chloriney, but she just couldn't be stuffed enough to go down and buy any. So she held her breath and drank the tap water anyway. Some calls. And emails. Dead laptop battery (the cord that plugs into a US socket is in Provincetown). TV. Water. Toss. Turn. TV. More water. Look out window. TV. Toss. Turn. Sleep at 3:00 am, determined to get up and be on the road at 8:00 – just in case she needed to shovel her way into the condo. Phone rang at 6:00. "Hello?" Ye gods. "I'll call you later." straight back to sleep. She left the hotel at 9:30. Bugger.

Easy driving. Stopped at a food place called 'Friendlys' on the way. It wasn't particularly. Miriam had an omelette. She didn't even take me out of my sock. On the road again, to Hyannis and got a coat at Kmart, plus checked out mobile phone options. Decided not to get one just yet. Next week. Maybe.
Then onto Provincetown. Here's a pic of the first glimpse she got of the town, from Route 6 just past Truro.


And here we are. The condo looks like this this morning. Pretty, eh!

I'll get Miriam to take more shots today...
N xx