Sunday (not last sunday, but the sunday prior to that)

As it is one week + one day from the day that I promised I would post about, I must get down to it or never get down to it. Because I have an unreliable memory and sunday is ebbing away into the ether. So it may be sparse or spotty, but what can you do about it?


Nothing, that's what. You'll take what I give to you and be damned happy about it.* Now hold on, I just remembered I need to send my poor sick brother an ecard.

K, done. Now down to business.


Now before I knew my parents were coming into town, I had seen the Renegade Craft Fair advertised and thought "oo- I always like the 20% of a craft fair that's not middle aged ladies knitting cat sweaters that say 'bless this mess' and is instead things that I would actually buy" and the renegade craft fair looked to be 100% of that 20%. If that makes any sense at all. So I was super jazzed about going to the craft fair (and Brooklyn! I feel that I neglect Brooklyn, but I never have a reason to go. So yay! reason to go to Brooklyn!).

But then The Parents needed to be entertained (see below about how I enjoy entertaining my parents) so I kinda mentioned it, but knew I couldn't do that to them. I mean, my dad is a lovely fellow for finding something to interest him in non-traditionally-male places, but in a renegade craft fair? Even he is not that flexable.

And yet, there is another factor in this story. Since I have come of a sensible age, I am now trusted to make interesting day-excursion choices (and bc now I can't be bossed around as much) (not that I ever could be bossed around, as i have been a stubborn minx from the moment of my first breath). And my dad had invites to a variety of barbeques from family/friends in the area. Hence at one point, there was a definite possibility that I might be going to the renegade craft fair, mother in tow!


Since this has led to a complicated state of affairs (everything's more complicated when the youngest member of a party has a say in what happens) let's round up what's on the scales:

Pro Fair Factors

• Julia trusted to make intelligent day-trip choices (not to immediately scream"Kings Dominion! Disney World! FAO Schwaaaaaaaartz!")
• Mum did not arrive with ready-made plans (perhaps because I have all the NY tourism books from home)
• Dad has barbeques to go to instead of being tortured by patchouli scent and grrrly little craft thingys all day

Anti Fair Factors

• The Heat (same as Saturday, and it's hotter in the city)
  
• The Almost Certain Outdoorsyness of the whole affair
• It's a craft fair. Craft fair v. Museum is not a fair fight in the minds of my parents
• Dad heard it was in Williamsburg ("Oh.... that's not a good place [I raise objection to that characterization- heck, it's not Yonkers].... Well, it wasn't a good place when I lived in NY..... [let's just say that a tree my 5 yr old dad planted in the front yard of his childhood home in riverdale is a gnarled old oak whose roots disrupt the pavement, and he left NY around age 21] Well.... I guess it's ok. Maybe. But maybe I should come along.")
• The nut doesn't fall far from the tree. Owning to my current occupation, I know that many many MANY felonies are committed in Yonkers and I have used it as a topic of conversation with my parents because it shocked me a bit. Yonkers is such a fun name for such a dangerous town. So for the weekend, it was a running joke that Dad would exit the Bronx River Pkwy at Yonkers and roll down the windows talking loudly about all the expensive jewelry I was wearing if I didn't behave, or when he mentioned that Williamsburg was unsavory, I said "what is it? Yonkers?"
  
• The very long train ride from White Plains to Brooklyn.

Well, you see how this went. 5 factors to 3, even without weighing the relative persuasiveness of the factors, is pretty damning. And knowing my heat weakness from the day before (I was hurtin, folks, linen doesn't BREATHE, yo) my mother said "well, maybe we should go to the Cloisters. They have air-conditioning."

O the magical words. Air conditioning. I was putty. And also we could drive and park at the Cloisters. At that point, the hills were alive with the sound of Cloisters. The craft fair was to be regretted, surely, but had it been the place for me, it would have had air conditioning and been less than a 20 minute train ride away.

But I was tricked, cruelly tricked, dear readers. Not by my dear ancesters, the aged p's, though I believe they were a little too eager to play up the wonders of the Cloisters. But I do have one question to pose to the assembled party reading this:


WHO IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY MAKES A MUSEUM WITHOUT AIR CONDITIONING?

There are a number of people at the end of this page who are somewhat to blame. If it were law-suitable, I'm sure I could drag all of their asses into court in some way. But alack alas, the lack of air conditioning is not something you can sue over. ** Though I doubt that the Unicorn Tapestries are too happy with the hotitude of their circumstances. "We are world-famous pieces of art!" they cry in their squeaky, french accents, "Zere are ties bearing our eemage. TIES! We have earned you ze money! Give us ze air conditioning!"

The Cloisters is lovely, as you can see, and we got the little audio tour headsets (and I had my own headphones with me- score!) (because they gave better sound. I'm trying to be less germophobic, but this substitution served more than one purpose). But by the time I had seen 17 bjillion Christ childs and admired the medieval plants in the courtyards and examined finials which protrayed the naked naughty folk being swallowed whole by Hell, I just wanted a little heat relief.

There is one room which is airconditioned. And the airconditioned room is equipped with a guard who keeps a tight seal on the room. He was fanatical about that door. You got in quick, no dilly-dallying in the corridor. You got out quicklier, because by then you knew the score and that he would just snap if you didn't obey. And no one wanted him to snap. Let me outline this for you: the AIRCONDITIONING is more guarded than the ART, ppl. And I'm not ashamed to say that on that day, I thought THAT was the WAY GOD INTENDED IT TO BE.


Heat messes with my priorities.

I spent as much time with the art in that room as was possible: I examined every inch of every tiny piece of art in there, I read all the little placards including the materials placards, I listened to all the stories on my headset, I looked out the windows, I discussed the art with my fellow patrons, but eventually I had to leave. A said minute indeed, when fanatic guard locked me out of the tiny cloud of cool heaven in the broiling maze that some sadistic curator decided to fill with mother-enticing art.

Anyway, the Cloisters is lovely and I highly reccommend it on any day that is 80 degrees or below. But above 80 and forget it. It's experiences like these that make me think that I'm gonna move to Vermont or Nova Scotia or Quebec City when I finally figure out what I want to do with my adult life.

So after the Cloisters, it was time for linner/dunch. Being up in the upper upper upper Manhatttanees, we swung by my dad's birthplace (a hospital which is now a co-op) and tooled around that area for a wee bit.

Then we journeyed to Bronx's Little Italy, to the restaurant where my dad's prep school holds its annual reunion. Dad always comes back from reunion night as you would expect a man to come home after a reunion with all his irish and italian catholic high school buddies. Phrases such as "an' we're gonna tell that sunno'abitch jus' where he ken stick it" have been uttered with much ... well, as close as a grown man can get to giggling. So we knew that the bartenders were good and the owners are a tolerant bunch. Dad swears that the food is fantastic (but drunk food is always good).

It was fabulous. I've never been to a bad italian restaurant in NY. This one wasn't the best, but it certainly beats any italian restaurant I've been to in any other town. But that was not the remarkable part of the evening. We ordered our meal, and they brought everything out, but the entree my mum had placed in front of her was not her entree. When the waiter realized this (I think my dad said "you had spinach in your dish...") he insisted on bringing out the other entree as well. "Just a taste, Just a taste... You have to taste it. It's what you wanted" he said in that wonderfully italian way when we all protested (as after we had enjoyed some bread, we were all not feeling equal to the food already threatening the table's joints). So we had four dishes, plus a huge side of spinach (don't ask why, we don't know). We tried our best, you know we did, but it was impossible to make a significant dent in the food. So I took home the better portion of 4 meals to my tiny little fridge. Luckily I had guests coming in that night, (though they didn't help, as they kept showing up all fed and ready to sleep) so we used that as an excuse to the dissapointed waiter who really thought we could eat it all.

But there was no way to do that. Unless we wanted to invite a couple of hollow-legged teenage marathon-running boys to our table. 3 people are no match for 4 entrees + bread + a heaping mound of garlicy spinach. mmmm.... spinach.

Anyway, then we drove back to White Plains to drop me off, and then my parents drove to a barbeque for the rest of the evening (eschewing all food, as we all were feeling slightly ill at that point.) At Legal Sea Food on Friday, I first became aware of scrod, which is amost horrific combination of letters for a most benign sea creation. In the grand Julia tradition, scrod became my adjective of choice: "man, it smells like scrod here. Roll up the windows" or "I got some scrod on my shoe- gotta wipe it off." When I got home, due to the heat and my valiant efforts with the food despite the heat, I felt a bit like scrod. And saying goodbye to my lovely parents also causes some scroddy feelings, so I was glad when my guests showed up later. With Futurama DVDs. I have good, tasteful-in-all-areas-save-me friends.

Next post: Rehash of week. Interesting stuff going down in life of Julia. But Julia is lazy and it takes a long time and a lot of concentration for me to write this up. So send ritalin and love and repeat-song suggestions. Tonight's broadcast was brought to you by the latest white stripes album. I know I'm supposed to like the more seriouser songs on it, but my favorites are Little Ghost and My Doorbell. Especially My Doorbell. Oh yeah.


*I'm kidding :D
**that is, until Jultopia becomes a reality. Although it will be unnecessary, given the general temperate nature of the weather in Jultopia, lack of air-conditioning will be a trespass punishable by revocation of summer-weather-clothing. From that point on, the perpetrator shall be forced to wear flannel and turtlenecks and fleece-lined pants and ski hats with wee little pompoms all over. O, I am serious about this, folks.