Sorry for the delay but I've been thinking about the next blog post for a couple of weeks now and I didn't want to follow up with some lame post on how beautiful the bougainvilleas are this time of year in New Jersey.
I guess the core of the issue for me and this blog is that not much happens in Montclair... at least for my family. And I guess that's the point. When we were living in Manhattan I used to come home with a great story or adventure every day. Like the time a guy dressed in full leather bondage gear (including a hood) up and died across the street from our apartment after chaining himself to a fence by his dog collar. No one noticed the body since it was right before Halloween and he looked like a decoration. According to the NYPD his death was due to "natural causes."
Or the many times that Harry and I would ride the subways for hours just to get out of the house so Colleen could take a nap when she was preggers with Vivian. We loved freaking out the tourists by having my 4 year old give them directions: "to get to South Ferry you can either take the 1 all the way down or the 2 or the 3 express train to Chambers Street and then transfer." For the record our favorite trip was to take the 1 to Times Square, then the Shuttle over to Grand Central then the 7 train out to Queens until it comes out from underground. Then we'd turn around, go back to Grand Central and head downtown on the 4, 5, or 6 and somehow make it back to the 1 train on Chambers to get back up to Houston Street. Round trip was a couple of hours on a Sunday barring any construction.
Or the two weeks that Colleen and I spent at the Grange Hall before we had kids and they were re-doing the kitchen in our one bedroom apartment. I'm not sure if you've ever been through anything similar but when you go through a project like that in a tiny NY apartment the entire space pretty much becomes uninhabitable except for the bed and the bathroom. So every night for two weeks Colleen and I would meet at the bar of the Grange Hall (sadly gone now) to escape from the construction. We got to know the bartenders, ate like vikings, and Colleen even named a drink -- it's the Bedford and involves an absurd amount of rye whiskey. It got to the point where we really didn't want the kitchen to be finished.
Now we're in a new home and a new town and we have to start making our own stories and rituals. Weekend lunches from the Watchung Deli, t-ball practice at Edgemont Park, grilling in the backyard, and, I'll save this for another post, but I have joined a softball league and many of you know my complicated relationship with that particular sport.
But that story is for another time after I work out my issues with a team of therapists... did I mention the bougainvilleas look amazing out here?