A Winter Garden

11300 Steps

It finally snowed the way I asked it to. Here is the view from my front steps:

While others were shoveling, scraping, and probably exfoliating, I put on my headphones, ear muffs, parka, snow shoes and walked to work. I was a mobile cacoon with snow falling heavily all around me. The feeling was of being safe/protected and engaged at the same time. My happiness scale was an 11.

Oh look over there it's the world famous

The apartment-side pavement of Central Park West was salted, but I chose the woolly road less travelled Central Park side. Except for yellow snow left by the dog walkers (dogs themselves actually) it was pristine over there. I was not alone in my enthusiasm for fresh snow. I stopped a kindred spirit, this really happy woman, and we photographed each other in the park.

View from my office in Times Square

After work I met Robin and Lexa at the Theatre Row Diner on 42nd Street. We were having dinner before going to Playwrights Horizons to see Mary-Louise Parker in "Dead Man's Cell Phone." These tickets were so hard to get I, of every angle/scam I know school of operating, could not get them. Lexa came in from LA ( It is SO fantastic to see her beautiful smiling face!) and she got them from her pal who is an editor at The New Yorker. (He came into the diner with the comped tickets. What a nice guy he was. On his way home from a book party in a 5th Avenue New York Penthouse like you would imagine when listening to those radio plays about the Manhattan swells on the wireless.) His wife is a curator at the Museum of Natural History. Robin is a published author starting her book tour and Lexa is a writer for a world-famous catalogue. I asked at dinner "Does anyone in New York just work at Walgreen's?" Apparently not.

Robin, Lexa, and a guy who used to work in the film department at Walgreens

I have never been to Playwrights Horizons before, but I know it is a key place in New York where so many plays and musicals are workshopped. The crowd looked to be made up of at least 50% theatre folk. Every other person looked like a stage actor. I am probably right. I sat next to two friends of the playwright, Sarah Ruhl. I offered them an Altoid. They declined. But politely.

Here is my lifelong issue/frustration with theatre: I go to a play after a full day of work. It is the first time all day I have sat down and been completely quiet. The lights go down. What was initially a wedged-in my seat between two people feeling becomes "cozy." I fall asleep. Immediately. And I am one of those people who goes straight into a dream, an alternate reality that I accept straight away, so I have NO IDEA that I am asleep! I did this throughout classes in high school and college. (Editors at The New Yorker probably never fell asleep in school.) I don't remember any of my dreams from last night's 1st Act, but they might have been something like I am standing on a moor in England with the woman down the hall in my office, whom I created a report for earlier today, SCREAMING at me about the amount of pie I ate. I get this and I feel remorseful. But the wind on the moor is howling and I cannot seem to explain to her that the pie I had to eat or her child was going to die but I could not tell her because the dancing llamas forbade it. Then I come to and Mary-Louise Parker is standing on a table kissing a man who's brother has just died. And I wonder if the friends of the playwright have HEARD me sleeping. And if they think that I am not OF THE THEATRE because only a drowsy HO-DAD would offer Altoids like he was in the local township's barn seeing yet another production of "Bus Stop" starring the woman who actually does work at Walgreens opposite the post man. I try to quiet my mind and pay attention to MLP.

(Here, gentle reader, I make a plug. I know I have a vast YA (Young Adult) readership and published author, Robin Palmer's book is for YOU. Please check it out and buy it. It is called Cindy Ella and you can get it by clicking on the title. She was also commissioned to write an original essay for Powells Books. Check it out. Great prom photo, Robin!)