Mid-November Musings

Winter is well on its way and we're freezing already. Lord knows how these little Aussie hotties are going to survive four months of snow! I bought Yasmin her first snow suit last week. She looks hilarious all bundled up in bright pink. She’s sorted out, but Ahmed and I have yet to get kitted up for the winter, and we haven't got much longer before the weather gets us. New York’s weather guy and his Accu-weather forecast (yes, everything is sponsored here) tells us it'll be snowy early December, maybe even Thanksgiving, which is next week. Yasmin is getting excited about throwing snowballs at her parents, and we're excited about that too (yeah).

We took our first car trip to New York last weekend. What a trip. No map, only a few scribbled instructions on how to get to a great Greek cafe, given to us by a guy in our building. I'm sure the cafe is great, but we didn't find it. Travelling down the I-95 is pretty simple. Just like home, it's one highway, pick your direction, north or south. But as we got into New York suddenly there's this massive pile of concrete spaghetti in front of us and none of the signs matched the directions we'd been given. So, we just stayed on it and kept driving and taking exits at random. We did end up in Queens, as we had hoped we would. But as to where in Queens, no idea. I do remember seeing lots of street signs at intersections, but I can’t compute the corner of 89th and 6th (I made that address up, there isn’t actually any intersection there, for the pedants among you, but you get the idea…), but all these street numbers! …give me names, darling, names.

Even after consulting the small electronic map on the palm pilot, still no idea. Electronics are great, but I just can't wait for the day that Darling Husband o’ mine loads up the rest of the map so it works properly. He reckons what we need is an in-car GPS, but after numerous wrong turns, I maintain that a GPS is useless if you don’t listen and take the turns it tells you to take. I, naturally, am a brilliant navigator, but hampered in that I operate with defective driving equipment (him). In the meantime I’m buying a proper paper map so at least, electronics aside, I’ll have a clue where I am. Unfortunately, there’re no Melways here. You have to buy maps for each county – and on any given Sunday drive, we can cross three or four counties. But now that we’ve braved the first attempt at NYC and managed to get out alive, we might have another go soon. This time, we’ll take Manhattan! I heard years ago that owning a car in NYC is only slightly more difficult than owning a 747. Well, I might have to test out that urban cliché in our new rental car. Our proper car is still on its way. For now we have a zippy little SUV, which it turns out I love (and yes they do come in ‘small’, even here). We had it just one day when we were advised our other car is ready. Just when I get something I like… So, true to the expected behaviour of the car renter, I’m gonna drive that li’l sucker to within an inch of its life while I’ve got the opportunity. Well I would, except Ahmed chickened out on the weather this morning and took it to work.

Just to kill time yesterday (and because we had a new car) I took those of us not at work or school for a drive to Ikea in New Haven. Yes, it’s big. Two floors and comparable to the one in Richmond, Vic. And surprise, surprise, exactly the same stuff. No variation whatsoever. I don’t know what I expected, really. Well, I do actually. I expected the same stuff because I was looking for something I’d left behind in Melbourne that it was too hard to pull apart and bring with us. But wouldn’t you know it – it was the ONLY thing they didn’t have. Apparently they’ve pulled it from stock to make it better or something. I’m not sure how you can make a solid, functional, endlessly useful step-stool better, because from where I’m sitting, it’d only be better if they had one for me to buy. So I got suckered into a small child’s high chair on which to install the Wee Child, so that our Saturday night dinner guests aren’t drawing straws for which of them has to sit on the couch.

Yes, we’re entertaining this weekend. At least, I hope we’ll be entertaining. Apart from providing company and a home cooked meal for one of husband’s overseas work colleagues when he was in town, I’ve not presented myself, offspring and house to the inspection of any of the locals. And looking around, it shows. I guess it means tomorrow is a day of domestics – shopping, cleaning, food prep. After all, I’m here to play corporate wife. Now if I just think back to images of the 1950s…. I’m sure I can recreate some version of masculine nirvana. I may need to employ mother’s little helper… both to help me stomach the thought of such archaic claptrap and keep a drunken wee smile on my face while doing so. Pass the Gordons!