THINGS I SAW TODAY THAT MADE ME SMILE

i woke up this morning alarmed to find that everything in the room was frowning at me.

the drapes, the lamp, all of the bedding and the mess of toys on the floor, but most of all my baby, oh how my baby frowned at me.

when i realized my sinuses were still mad at me from the night before and that their discontent had since spread to my lungs i nearly called it quits. "ugh, this day!" and then huck kicked at the blanket in frustration and nothing, not even a bagel could help us, we were too far gone.

so for the rest of the day, in an attempt to turn things around, i wrote a note of everything i saw that made me smile. in no particular order, here they are:

a very old man wearing head-to-toe polyester leaning over two seats on a bench to shout "when can i see you again?" at a sweet old lady with a salt and pepper afro.

a fluffy old english sheep dog coming out of the subway.

santa claus crossing the street at 72nd and amsterdam. he was wearing one green sneaker and one red.

a newsstand stocked with cold bottles of diet pepsi just when i thought i'd die of thirst.

there is a place called manhattan cat specialists. amazing.

there were lots of yorkie puppies by the fairway this afternoon for some reason. one got stepped on by accident and a fancy lady's driver shouted out the window from the curb, "stop texting while you walk!"

i tried on huck's red suspenders to see how serious i felt about buying my own matching pair. verdict: i'm more serious about it than i expected to be.

a man on 14th street asked me why i looked so serious. it was because i was thinking about thrifting.

i bought a whole bunch of cheesy western paperback mini novels at the borders 90% off closing sale the other day, and they've been staring at me cheerfully ever since. one of them is called "strongheart: a promise kept . . . in blood." 

i got to pet maddie, the terribly overweight poodle, in the elevator.

i stopped by tani to visit with my new swedish friends. they whispered in my ear that they would be a perfect birthday gift for me. "tell your husband!" they said. and then i said back, "are you crazy? do you know how much you cost?!" i think those swedish shoe friends are a bad influence on me, because i told him anyway.

huck ate some prunes and i got a little carried away with my prune plane. as i was executing masterful prune spoon stunts, he waved his arm at the spoon like king kong and i heard a splat from somewhere across the room (i have yet to find it).

that was the best part of this post.

WHAT DO YOU WEAR TO A FASHION WEEK PARTY ROUND TWO

i don't know how it's happened, but two years in a row now i've managed get a last-minute invite to a fashion week party. and! two years in a row i talked to a project runway winner at the party! weird coincidence now that i think of it.....

HERE'S HOW IT WENT DOWN:

dress via my bud ck

afterward i went home to change and put the huckles to bed, and then we went out again for pizza at patsy's and gelato for dessert. 

good girls night if i do say so myself.

(confession: i haven't had cable tv in years and haven't seen an episode of project runway since chrsitian siriano won it a million years ago.)

THE PROBLEM WITH TEN MONTHS

this morning as we nursed in bed snuggled up together, his arm squeezing mine as i hoped to find another hour of sleep hidden under my pillow, i realized my huckleberry was staring at me.

sometimes through the sweet chub on his face i catch a quick glimpse of his budding jawline and the sweet little boy he's becoming. sometimes he'll flash me a look, a look like he is in there--this boy in this baby body--this look like babyhood is almost over and this baby body is not always going to be a baby body and these mornings won't stick around forever.

i'm still convinced that one of these days i'll find the button that will magically turn him back to three days old. three days was my favorite. i loved three days because three days moved so terribly awkwardly, like a baby t-rex in slow motion.

i loved the scrunched little face and the head of dark hair and the soft little wail when three days cried.

i loved when three days woke from a cat naps and grunted at me. i'd lift him up, my hands on his ribs and my fingers supporting his wrinkled little head, and then he'd reach his skinny little arms to the sky and scrunch his bony little knees up to his chest and yawn his three days yawn and wrinkle his three days face as he enjoyed the end of his three days stretch.

oh my gosh i would give anything for three days again. anything in the world.

this is not to say that ten months does not have its charms.

ten months does not spit up, have terrifying mustardy blow outs, or have healing circumcisions to worry around during diaper changes. there are no umbilical cord stumps, soft spots are fairly hard now, and bumps and bruises are part of the game and worn like a badge of honor. "see this? i'm crawling!" is what ten months says.

ten months mainlines cheerios like an addict, takes sips from straws and looks up at you with the cheesiest smiles, takes more-or-less regular naps, and even is sometimes patient while you "run in real quick i just want to see something" five times in an afternoon outing.

but the problem with ten months is that ten months is not three days.
ten months comes with wanting to get down and explore instead of never-ending cuddles.

and after ten months comes eleven months,
and i simply cannot stand for the nonsense of eleven months.
ten months, okay. we've made a conciliatory peace.
eleven months? don't push your luck, bucko.

i hate to let him grow up.
but the older he gets, the better i know him.
and he's a pretty cool cat, it turns out.
so i suppose i will let him just the same.

TEN YEARS LATER

What I remember most about the Twin Towers was how very windy they were from the top, and how very long their shadows stretched across the streets of Lower Manhattan. 

I was eighteen when they fell. I was going to college in Utah, and I turned on the TV on a whim that morning on my way in to make breakfast. I didn't make any of my classes that day; I didn't even make it to the kitchen for breakfast. I just sat there, cross-legged on the floor, staring at the TV in disbelief. Later, I numbly got dressed and went on campus. In the Humanities building TVs had been wheeled out from classrooms so students could watch the news in the hall. The silence was deafening. We were all overwhelmed and emotional. I've never felt so close to complete strangers in my life.

A friend of mine spoke in church today. She described walking uptown in a daze after the planes hit. She walked for blocks, next to barefoot women holding their high-heeled shoes, and businessmen covered in gray dust with bewilderment on their faces, as emergency vehicles screamed past them heading downtown. 

When I worked at the Merrill Lynch offices across the street from Ground Zero, a coworker told me she watched the second plane coming closer and closer on CNN, before realizing she could also watch the plane coming closer from out her own office window.  They evacuated the building and then she ran uptown through the falling debris as hard and as fast as she could before realizing somewhere around 20th Street that nothing was chasing her, and she had no idea where she was going.

This friend who spoke in church today shared a story. She gave me permission to share it on the blog, thanks, Ena!

Mychal Judge was among the first to enter the North Tower after the planes hit. Mychal Judge was a Franciscan priest, and a chaplain for the New York City Fire Department. On his way in to the towers that morning he met Rudy Giuliani, who asked him to pray for the victims and the city. He went in to administer Last Rites for the injured and dead. When the South Tower collapsed, he was killed by falling debris. He was carried out by firemen and civilians, and was later certified as the first fatality of the attacks.  The passage below are excerpts from his eulogy, delivered by Fr Michael Duffy.

"Mychal Judge's body was the first one released from Ground Zero. His death certificate has the number "one" at the top... Why was Mychal Judge number one?... I think I know the reason.
Mychal's goal and purpose in life was to bring firemen to the point of death, so they would be ready to meet their maker. There are between 200 and 300 firemen buried here. Mychal Judge could not have ministered to them all. It was physically impossible in this life but not in the next.
In the next few weeks we're going to have names added, name after name of people, who are being brought out of that rubble. And Mychal Judge is going to be on the other side of death to greet them instead of sending them there. He's going to greet them with that big Irish smile... he's going to take them by the arm and the hand and say, "Welcome, I want to take you to my Father."
And so, he can continue doing in death what he couldn't do in life."

Ena closed her talk with this quote from one of my favorite movies (quoting a rated-R movie in church, Ena is so my kind of girl):

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that.  It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there--fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends,  old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge--they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around."

I wrote a little bit more about 9/11 from a parenting perspective here.

THIS WEEK IN PICTURES

here are the posts i wrote for the babbles this week:

housey movies round two: something's gotta give!

fun hostess gift ideas, pretty desks, cleaning supplies & landing zones,

what i'm wearing this fall, easy beauty tips for fall, and 

how to have a killer wardrobe on a budget

and my huckleberry posts:

learning to kiss, and requesting your fav kids book recommendations 

cause all our old books done got lost