Fine Nights

We tend to spend as many nights as possible in New Paltz with the occasional night in NYC when work or a special event require it. However there are those times when you just need to be in NYC. This week is one of those times. With hubby away on work for 4 days I decided that I would bring the cats with me into the city for the week. 4 days of city living, which I do occasionally miss, with my cats as company just in case the last minute notice isn't enough to schedule nights out with friends. I got lucky and was able to spend last night out with colleagues and tomorrow with my best gal pal enjoying retail therapy leaving just tonight to come up with something to do. Not a hard problem. When you live in a city with endless delivery options (and healthy ones at that) and have the company of cats and cable tv it's just not that hard to occupy yourself. The Chinese place is actually called "tofu" although they do serve meat dishes also. Black mushrooms and snow peas in spicy sauce...mmm. New Zealand sauvignon blanc...double mmm. Sage oil infused VT cheddar cheese with reduced fat triscuits... mmm.

I'm still learning, and likely will be for some time, what makes us tick when we're living in the city vs when we're in the country. Both seem to make us very happy, tho we crave them differently and have very different expectations of our time spent in either. Our larger cat, Bridger, couldn't care less - I think. As long as he has multiple windows to stare out of with plenty of action happening on the other side of them he is plenty entertained. The small cat, Bode, is fine as long as I'm nearby. Period. This is really making me out to miss the city isn't it...not the intention, I assure you, but also not necessarily a negative result of the post. I think we've (I've) just spent so much time thinking about our pending adoption that a week of something familiar, city living, is turning out to be somewhat of a "vacation from thought" or perhaps just the opposite, more of a perspective gaining time to reflect and compare how our lives have evolved over the past 8 months.

A pregnant woman got on the subway with me on my way home tonight. She must have been in her late 30's at least, and I wondered who would give up their seat so that she could sit down comfortably (ha) for the ride. Another mother sitting next to her teenage son got up and gestured for the pregnant woman to take her seat, which she happily did. I'm not sure why the mother didn't use this opportunity to teach her son that subway seats should be given to pregnant, elderly, with child, and various other groups by having him relinquish his seat, but at least she attempted to teach by example. When we bring our child back from Ethiopia, WHEN, oh wow. When we bring our child back from Ethiopia, wow I can't even finish the sentence - I'm so excited. WHEN.