Life in New York (Even if it is Temporary)

I've been here 9 days and life has developed into a pattern. We work our schedules around my parents' music rehearsals and Mom's job. Mom is still working 3 days a week at age 80. She and Papa both have music rehearsals for their band and symphony performances. Mom has knitting activities with a group of women and takes more clarinet lessons. She really keeps busy.

First thing in the morning, she gets up and walks her dog, Sally.

Sally might just be the best part of this trip. She is sweet and friendly and oh so smart.

Yesterday, I helped Mom clean the house. We had to dust and sweep the floors because Sally, my mom, and I all seem to shed our hair everywhere! Mom was sweeping under her bed when she saw it needed a little repairing.

She was all the way under the bed when I first entered the room. I was only able to snap a pic of her when she was almost out from under the bed. We had a good laugh. I can't remember exactly the joke, but something along the lines of, "The monsters under the bed better beware!" and, "The monsters are dust bunnies."

I don't know. Something really silly like that. We were laughing so hard we each almost peed in our pants. It's been a long time since she and I were able to laugh like that.

Sally runs into the guest room and jumps up on the bed when she hears me stirring. It took a few days to get to this point. At first, she would growl and bark. When my brother was here for Thanksgiving, Sally never warmed up to him. He's a little jealous now. I keep the sibling rivalry alive by sending him "Sally and Me" photos.

Like this one. She is eagerly cuddling me on the bed. It was a little hard to get her to hold still, but eventually, I was able to snap this pic.

We took Sally to the dog park to play with all the other dogs around. It's a little hard for me to get used to the idea of needing to take a dog to a special park to let it exercise and play. I'm so used to our dogs having 30 acres to run around on. But Sally loves the park. She has to sniff and inspect every human before she will start playing with the other dogs. She also likes to do tricks. She runs through a little tunnel, jumps on top of it, jumps down, and runs to two rings, one big and one small, and runs through those. Then she jumps back and forth over a little bar. She gets frequent treats for doing tricks and then we play.

Sally and I have invented a new game called "Get." She will have a toy and I tell her I'm going to get it. She loves this game so much. We played it with just each other and we played it with all the other dogs.

We all got cold and tired and HUNGRY.

Mom took us to this place called Abbots to get frozen Custard. It's 17F (-8C) and my mom wants frozen treats!!! She doesn't even like ice cream!

This store offers a really cute treat. It is a tiny cup of frozen custard with a little dog bone. So, even Sally got a treat. We bought black raspberry for Papa, chocolate almond for Mom, and butterscotch for me. Sally's was vanilla.

As soon as we got home, I took a pizza crust out of the freezer and went to work building a pizza. I used mushrooms, black olives, leftover chicken, and diced pepperoni. Of course, it had a tomato sauce base and a lot of mozzarella cheese. I'm sorry I didn't take a pic. We were so hungry the pizza disappeared in a flash.

After pizza, it was time to take a little nap. Well, Sally napped. I looked for houses on the internet.

I have to say, New York, with all the snow and different activities is a far cry from Los Angeles. But it is still nice.

I almost forgot: my quitting smoking campaign is actually going very well here. The cold weather helps, but so does the relaxing environment. Mom has me chewing gum instead of smoking.

I haven't yet reached my goal of being cigarette-free by Valentine's day, but I'm pretty close! Only 3 cigarettes all day for 3 days in a row. Keep sending me your healthy thoughts and I'll keep cutting down!

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All images photos by Jonica Bradley