Conifers pine fir yew in New York musical museum fire engine
“… not simply pine cones, Dan.” Nazy explained. “They are conifer..”
“ …. droppings, my dear.” I interrupted. “Conifer droppings!? It’s just like pigeon..”
“They are from cedar, fir, cypress, juniper, larch, pine, redwood, spruce and yew trees.” Nazy interjected.
“Yew?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do yew?”
“My friend Nyla helped me gather these. I was going to make Christmas wreathes.”
“Great idea!” I replied. “I shouldn’t have put the pine cones under the box of National Geographic magazines,” I thought.
I am happy to report that Melika’s driveway is now clear of our storage. (Her garage, of course, is a different story for a different week.) Most of our ‘treasured’ items have been relocated from the storage bin to the garbage bin. We gave 43 boxes of books to a local bookstore. BUT … we kept 4 boxes of books and a uncomfortably large number of ‘special’ items that still need to be processed.
“Processed?” Nazy asked. “What does that mean? I have an emotional attachment to these mementos.”
“I know. And because of the emotion, the process that I propose involves Last Rites. It will give you closure.”
“Last rites? Like a funeral?”
“Precisely,” I thought. “And after that, the stuff will be buried. In a dump.” “Of course not, Nazy,” I said. “It’s just a coping stratagem.”
”Enough of the storage!” A reader interrupts. “Did anything else happen this week?”
The week was marked by the traditional and beautiful Santa Barbara sunset — with the added bonus of a new moon.
And we went to New York City with Tom, Melika and the grand(est)sons Tiger and Arrow. It began with an red eye from LAX to JFK. To assure that they’d awake bright and active on Friday morning, Tiger and Arrow slept through the night. I, on the other hand, was a bit restless…
“Just like Tiger, you could have slept,” Nazy noted.
“His seat wasn’t as cramped as mine.” I thought. “Yes dear,” I said.
Tom and Melika were on the East Coast for a wedding. They also were able to squeeze in a couple of Broadway shows - Hamilton and Something Rotten. On Sunday, they treated Nazy and me to Beautiful, the Musical about Carol King — which was great!
We also took Tiger to see Times Square, the big buildings and, on the excellent recommendation of Joel and Christine, took Tiger to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. He had a great time! The Museum is designed for kids. It’s sized for them and has all kinds of spaces to paint, explore and play. There was even a giant pachinko set with plastic balls to illustrate probability mechanisms. While there,Nazy found Persian number puzzles for Tiger.
All of us in NYC
We also went to the meat packing district for brunch and a walk along the High Line Park in NYC. This walkway is built on a no-longer used elevated railway line on the lower west side. They’ve planted tree and flowers along the pathway. It has great views of the Hudson and the city streets below. Tiger was particularly impressed by ‘tall buildings’ and the ‘busy, noisy, town’. He was impressed by the s-t-r-e-t-c-h limo and the siren-blasting ambulance and fire trucks. And, when it came to fire trucks, Tom had …
“A friend who is head of a fire station in New York,” Tom explained. “And he is willing to show Tiger a real fire truck.”
The visit to the fire station took place while Nazy and I were watching Beautiful. But there was an emergency call during their visit.
“… and a woman was stuck in an elevator, Dan.” Tom explained. “They scrambled a huge truck, one of only 15 in the city that has a driver in the back. Then they let Tiger and me ride along.”
“Did they turn on the siren?” I asked. Jealously.
“It went ‘whee-whee-whee’. Loud.” Tiger interjected.
“I guess that’s a ‘Yes!’”, I replied as Tom began showing us photos. (See his Facebook page.)
It was a wonderful and fun trip. At two months, Arrow has the delightful inability to move — so, when you put him somewhere, he stays there. And, amazingly, he generally stays there quietly or quietly cooing. (Unless he is hungry, in which case a simple replacement of ‘quietly’ with ‘loudly’ and ‘cooing’ with ‘crying’ can maintain the accuracy of the previous sentence.) In contrast, one thing that is sure about Tiger is that he won’t stay put. (It’s hard to stay put when your DNA has a plethora of perpetual motion genes.)
Tiger and Arrow both slept on the pleasant flight back home. It was a great, and fun weekend excursion.
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Dan and Tiger
(Dan needs new sunglasses)