Crazy Stable

...even if one only makes it from Brooklyn to Manhattan once in awhile. Living in the CrazyStable and working from home, it is easy to get an incipient case of Grey Gardens syndrome, drifting around the shambles like Little Edie, just me and the cats...there's always so much to keep me glued here (or grouted here). Yesterday, it took a long-procrastinated mammogram appointment to get me out of the house and into "the city" of a Friday.  So I guess travel was, er, flattening, although the Guttman Institute is the Cadillac of women's health centers, more like a day spa, with hot coffee brewing, private paneled changing rooms, and an unfailingly considerate staff. Thanks to all the friends, including some BC survivors, who have bugged me to get this important test.

Having been squoze, I repaired to Dean & DeLuca for a Lenten snack of tuna empanada and an obscenely expensive but meatless cupcake with piped lavender buttercream daisies on top--the sacrifices we make for our faith! I hit New York Central Art Supply, surely the world's most Serious art store. On a previous trip to their famed paper department, I panicked and bolted, intimidated by their stern and knowledgeable staff, who were talking shop with a lot of very Serious artiste types. This time, I was brave, and got the 10 big creamy sheets of Arches needed for a book art project. A young lady with dense black tattoos on her slender wrists wrapped the sheets in a nifty flat package, even cutting in a nice handle with an X-Acto knife. I kidded her about how much better a job she was doing than the cashier at the crafts shop at the mall, who tried to stuff $20 worth of huge archival paper sheets loose into a plastic bag. The waif looked up at me with blank, dark-rimmed eyes. "The mall?" she asked, puzzled.

Emerging into an early Spring rain, I dodged around the corner to Grace Church, the little piece of Gothic England at a bend of Broadway where I used to linger on my walk home from NYU, pretending for a few moments that I was in Oxford or Cambridge. Bless them Episcopalians, there was a noon-hour "organ meditation" just starting, so I slipped into a pew with my bundles of art supplies and basked in 20 minutes of jaw-droppingly good Bach, while the rain pattered on the roof as it's done (with some evident damage) since 1846. My dad and I always bonded over Bach, especially organ stuff--absolutely no accident that I stumbled onto this island of solace.

And then it was time to head for the train and pick up the Child at school. You know, the grout may still be unsealed, but I really do need to get out more.