Sabbatical.

In case it wasn't circumstantially clear, I am on...sabbatical.  Until further notice.

When I return, it will be with abundant bells and whistles.  I promise.

The skinny on my skinny.

I’m not trying to be immodest, but it didn’t take me very long to lose the “baby weight” I accumulated during my pregnancy. In fact, during the past five months or so, I have found myself thinner than I have been in years.


I know. I just lost half of my readership.

For those of you remaining, bear with me. We all have our crosses, and it just so happens that excessive weight is not one of mine.

Many people ask me how I stay slim. Frankly, I’ve been wondering the same thing myself recently. A huge part of it is genetics. But there are other lifestyle factors that come into play. In fact, when it comes down to it, it seems that I have suddenly begun living the weight-loss pointers you might find in a "Redbook" article.*

No time for exercise? The "Redbook" article might ask. Leave that car in the garage and take a walk!

I no longer go to the gym or otherwise get any formal exercise. However, I live in Manhattan. My husband and I do not own a car. I am home every day.  I walk everywhere. And it’s not only that I walk everywhere. I walk everywhere, pushing my 25 pound son in an 18 pound stroller with a 7 pound diaper bag hanging off of it.

My husband bought me a pedometer for Christmas. It was on my wish list. I love this thing. Apparently, on an average day, I walk about two and a quarter miles. There are many days when I walk close to four miles. Pushing 51 pounds.

So there’s that. Is it realistic for people who live outside of major cities to walk to the store for milk and bananas? I doubt it. It would take too damn long, and likely would require a trek on major highways. But me? I do it, "Redbook." I’m living the “Oh my God it’s pouring rain, the store is ¾ of a mile away and I have one diaper left” dream.

Boss on your case? Try to cut back on stress where you can!

My job is to be the full-time caretaker of Acey. This job is not easy. It can be exhausting, overwhelming, and at times, confusing. Acey’s recent interest in living room gymnastics has lead to countless bumps, bruises, and yesterday, a shiner. Four weeks of off-and-on baby diarrhea have left me with the ability to sniff that sour awfulness from three rooms away. The periodic skipped nap can trip me up and leave me unable to schedule a shower until 7pm. But none of this is really stressful in the way, say, a court-imposed deadline is, or a client who insists on micro-managing the drafting of a brief. Tiring? Yes. Challenging? Yes. Stressful? Well, not for me.

Tempted by a cocktail while watching that football game? Why not opt for seltzer instead?

If there is any area of my life that was decimated by pregnancy and motherhood, it’s my alcohol consumption. I remember looking forward to the end of pregnancy and breastfeeding and thinking then, then I’ll go out and really let loose with my husband and friends. Of course, it’s hard to do the math about hangovers and sleep deprivation before you become a parent. Alcohol consumption for me is limited to that place between “enough to relax that knot that popped when I had to carry Acey in the stroller down two flights of subway steps with no help” and “not enough to diminish my already-borderline-cantankerous demeanor in the morning, which begins promptly at 6:15 regardless of the day of the week.” Yeah. Pass the seltzer.

Cut back on snacks. Do you really need that candy bar at 2pm?

Candy what? I can’t eat anything in front of Acey without sharing it. Well, unless it’s broccoli. And I’m just not inclined to give a Milky Way Dark to a 14 month old. I can’t snack. There are days I don’t even get to eat lunch until 2pm. There is no time to troll and to be honest, no snacks available that aren’t pretty healthy. Yes, apparently we’re one of those households.**

Treating yourself to an indulgent meal? Schedule it earlier in the evening to give yourself time to digest before hitting the hay!

The husband and I do like to take advantage of New York restaurants when we can. Granted, opportunities to do so aren’t as plentiful as they used to be. We’re limited to babysitter availability and Acey’s body clock. The overlap between these two categories is embarrassingly large. Acey is in bed by 7. If we’re going out to eat as a family, we need to be all-butts-in-seats at 5:00 and diapered-butt-in-stroller by 6:00, or risk a fireworks show. If we get a sitter, sure, I want to eat at a more civilized hour. But I ate breakfast at 6:45 and lunch at noon! I’m hungry at 7, and ravenous at 8. And there’s the aforementioned early morning to consider.

Needless to say, the days of our 9:30 reservations seem to be in the past for now.

And as a result of all this? My baby weight is gone. As is my desire to wear anything on my feet other than Merrells and my capacity to entertain a phone call after 9 pm. Maybe I will subscribe to "Redbook." The articles are fairly accurate.



*I don’t think I’ve ever actually read "Redbook." Nor is it likely I ever will, since we already have more periodicals in my home than the waiting rooms of my dentist, GP, and pediatrician, combined.


**I wonder how long we will be one of those households without a lot of junky snacks. I’m guessing until Acey gets to the age where I can successfully bribe him?

Those are mine.

I have mentioned here at Beyond Pickles that I like to keep a fairly neat home. I do. And so does my husband.

But we like to do other things more than we like to clean.

End result: a cleaning person.

Luckily for us, our new building is “full-service.” By this I mean that there is a business, of some sorts, located by the service entrance. It runs a convenience shop (where you can conveniently purchase a dozen eggs for $5.) It collects your dry cleaning and sends it out. It runs a cleaning service.

The cleaning service really seemed great: a good bargain for these parts, and flexible. We hired them a number of times, and all on the fly: “Can you come tomorrow at 11:30? Really? Great.”

And so, a team of two women came and cleaned our place. Five, maybe six times. The same woman came every time, but she was often accompanied by a different helper.

I have to admit, I have never been comfortable with having a person clean my home. In high school, when I would come home from school and the cleaning lady was there, I would hide upstairs until she was finished. This is impossible to do in a New York apartment, though. So when the cleaning team would come, I’d skedaddle.

A few weeks ago, the cleaning team was set to come at around 4pm. Acey and I went to playgroup at 3:30. When we approached the building at 5pm, I could see by the lights in our windows that the team was still there, doing its thing.

No problem. The woman with whom I had become familiar said they would be done in about an hour. This was fine. I went about the business of feeding Acey his dinner and moving toward bath and jammies.

So, as I sat down to feed Acey, a young woman was working in our living room, which is separated from the kitchen by a large island. She was probably about 19 years old, though she looked 15. She was pleasant enough.

But as she moved over the floor with a mop, I noticed something strange.

She was wearing my slippers.

We actually don’t wear shoes in our house. Acey is still crawling, and taking off shoes that have been pounding the ground in the subway and Manhattan gutters seems a nice way to cut back on germs. There is a doormat by our entryway, and we tend to have 3 or 4 pairs of shoes hanging out there at any point. My husband and I wear slippers, though, in the house, and often when we have to go short distances inside the building.

My slippers had been on the doormat. But now they were on the cleaning lady’s feet.

I was flummoxed. At first I thought maybe they weren’t mine. But I saw the familiar spit-up stains on the left one, and the place where the sole was separating from the body on the right. Plus, they were far too big on this tiny girl: truly, she could’ve taken one and used it as a toboggan.

Anyway, I was so startled and confused by the situation that I didn’t say anything. Silly, I know, but true. It’s because of my discomfort with cleaning people. I almost felt like, “You clean my toilets for me, so I can’t ask you to not wear my slippers.” Instead, I emailed my husband and reported the happenstance.

Acey finished dinner, had his bath, and changed into his jammies. The cleaning team left.

I checked my email to find a message from my husband that was riddled with alarm bells. He wanted me to report this to the manager of the building, the head of the little convenience shop, the Mayor of New York. He was nervous this team was wearing other articles of our clothing, and perhaps was the reason my watch was missing.*

Okay. So, I carried Acey downstairs and I talked to the store manager. But before I did this, I slipped my foot into my slippers. They were damp with perspiration. Oh. God.

“Hi. I’m from 516? I had the cleaning service in this afternoon.”
“Yes?” he said.
“Well, I actually wanted to complain,” I began. “When I got in, I saw that one of the women was actually wearing my slippers.”
The gentleman met this with a blank stare.
“She was wearing my slippers,” I tried again. “On her feet.”
“Um, okay.” The man started leafing through his book. “What apartment were you, again?”
“516.”
“Right. I guess I’ll tell my boss?”
“I mean, I don’t want her fired or anything. They did a fine job. But she may not wear my clothing. This is not okay. I feel like my privacy has been violated.”
“Okay. Um, okay.” The man was not apologetic, but neither was he irritated. He just seemed confused.

I left feeling not exactly like I had righted the situation, but at least I had done something. The damp slipper thing actually turned my stomach.

An hour or so later, my husband and I were eating dinner when someone knocked on our door. I guessed it was the store manager, and asked my husband to deal.

But when he opened the door, I heard a kind of hesitant back-and-forth, and my husband called for me to come. Ah. The cleaning team must be here.

They were.

The more senior member began: “Hi. Um, the man downstairs said you had a problem with the Swiffer®?”
“Swiffer®?” I said. “No. No. The cleaning is fine. I did speak to the man downstairs, but because one of you was wearing my slippers.”
“Oh. Because the man downstairs said there was a problem with the Swiffer®.”

A few things here. Clearly there was a bit of a communication problem between management and employees. You might also note that I explained why I had complained, but this didn’t seem to matter. I started to get a little confused. Maybe by keeping my slippers on the front mat, I was suggesting that all who enter should wear them inside? Like a Japanese household? No, that can’t be the case. We’re not Japanese. And for what it’s worth, nobody was wearing my husband’s slippers. Or his filthy Pumas, for that matter, which were also on the mat.

“There is no Swiffer® problem. I had a problem because you were wearing my slippers.” I looked to the younger girl. “That’s not okay. I don’t want you wearing my things when you are here.”
“Oh. Okay, well I was wearing these.” The more senior girl motioned to her high top sneakers.
The younger girl finally spoke up. “I was wearing them last time but you didn’t say anything so I thought it was fine.”

Time out. She wore them the last time she cleaned in our apartment? Was I home? How did I not notice?

“Look, I can assure you, had I realized you were wearing my slippers, I would’ve said something. I mean, they were damp on the inside when you were finished here tonight.” My face involuntarily contorted in disgust. I should point out, however, that I never raised my voice. I was really trying to explain why I had a problem.

The younger girl had had enough. “If you had had a problem with me wearing those slippers, you should’ve told me yourself.” She slowly cocked her head from side to side as she spoke, while moving a finger in a circle until it came to rest, pointing at me.

So this is my fault? You leave a puddle of perspiration in the slippers that carry me through my days and nights and you raise your voice at me?

“Okay. We’re done here.” I closed the door.

Needless to say, nobody ever apologized. We have never hired the cleaning service again. What is more, I had to throw the slippers away. I know that seems a bit compulsive, but I could sense the dampness long after they had dried out. And with the stains and the loose sole, they really were ready to go.

Meanwhile, I see Little Miss Sweaty Peds frequently. I smile at her. It’s too awkward to be unpleasant, especially since she will never see my point of view. Initially, she gave me the death-stare. Now she smiles back.

I can practically hear her talking to her coworkers as I walk away, “That tall lady? She told me to wear her slippers, then she went all bat-shit-crazy because we didn’t use a Swiffer® to clean her place.”



*I later found my watch in my robe pocket. Whether the cleaning team had donned my robe, watch, and slippers at some point, I can’t be sure.

Warm and rubbery.

By some small miracle, I find that it is 8:15 pm on December 23rd, and I have time to write. It’s Acey’s birthday. We had dinner (slow-cooked brisket in homemade barbecue sauce with roasted asparagus and brown rice), Acey’s first cake (Duncan Hines yellow, but with homemade whipped cream frosting), and presents. Our clockwork boy was in his crib and dreaming of sugarplums at 7:05 pm. I’m done my shopping – almost all online this year, for obvious reasons. I’m done wrapping. I made a dinner reservation for Saturday night when we have a babysitter. I have groceries here set to go for Acey’s little birthday party on Sunday. The place is clean. Even our laundry is done.

And I have time to write.

There’s snow on the ground here in New York. I’ve been chugging through it with Acey in his stroller for four days now. And man, is it cold.

I must admit, we city parents deal with babies-in-the-cold on a much more urgent level than our suburban counterparts. While I know nobody in Westchester is bringing their child to the car in a bathing suit, few babies out there spend more than a moment or so in this kind of frigid weather. House to car; car to store. Reverse.

With city babies, it’s different. They either must stay indoors, or their parents have to get them really freaking prepared.

Acey has never been homebound. My husband and I took him out to dinner on New Year’s Eve last year; he was eight days old. It was freezing. But we walked the several blocks to the restaurant and home and nobody was worse for the trip.

It was a little easier then. We could wrap him up in his jammies and a hat and a blanket. We’d tuck all the extremities into a carseat cover, and pop the weather wrap on the stroller to block the wind and away we’d go.

It’s different now.

Acey despises his coat. When I pull it off its hook, Acey’s reaction reminds me of when I used to go for my dog’s sweater when I was a child: he whimpers, shakes his head, and begins to crawl away in reverse.

Damn it.

The rodeo that is getting Acey into his coat is only part of the battle, though. He must be buckled into the stroller. Getting his stiff arms in through the straps is not unlike trying to fit a king-sized down comforter into a small washing machine: push, pull, push, pull…almost…push…CLICK. Done.

But wait, there’s more. Hat beneath the hood. Mittens on those itty-bitty hands: Do I bother to find the thumb? I know he’ll be happier...okay. Where’s your thumb? Is that your thumb? Did I just put your pointer finger in the thumb hole? Does it matter? Oh, well. Zip his bottom half into the Bundle Me blanket-sack that used to cover his whole newborn body.

His blue eyes will peer out at me in resigned submission. I know I should put the weather guard on his stroller to block the wind, but I haven’t done it yet this season unless there is actual precipitation.

What is this weather guard I keep mentioning? In the City, we need our strollers when it rains. Walks aren’t just for the hell of it.* Hence, we purchase the optional weather guard that resembles a huge piece of Saran Wrap that stretches over your baby carriage. You might think it looks dangerous. You might wonder if we want our babies to suffocate. It’s not and we don’t. It’s as necessary as the wipers on your car. And our babies don’t suffocate: they stay dry and warm.

But he hasn’t needed the weather guard yet. I press the inside of my wrist to his little nose whenever we get to where it is we’re going: he’s always warm. I find this sort of miraculous, given that my own nose is usually numb.

But my feet? My feet are warm.

Why?

Let’s go back in time.

It’s Christmas 1994. I am home from college for holidays for the first time. I dig into the presents under the tree. Typical Freshman-in-college stuff: some magnets for my mini-fridge, a men’s XL flannel from the Gap, maybe a Dave Matthews “Under The Table and Dreaming” CD. But there is also this huge box. My mom quivers with excitement when I go to unwrap it.

I open it to discover Wellington boots. They are green.

They are, to my 18 year old eyes, ridiculous.

My mom is crestfallen.

“But…you get so much snow in South Bend! It’s so cold there! These are so high and air-tight!”
“Mom. I can’t wear these. They are huge. And if I do wear them to walk to class, during the hour I spend inside the classroom, my feet will be swimming in sweat. There’s no ventilation!”

Besides. They were so awful. I wear a size 10. These boots looked like huge rubber torpedoes.

Naturally, my mom purchased them in a Vermont boutique from a man who showed her a photo of Princess Diana wearing them on a rainy English holiday. They were expensive and non-returnable.

I dragged them back to college, where my roommates nearly bust a gut laughing at them. They nicknamed them “the foot condoms.” I would put them on during all-nighters with my pajamas to get a laugh.

I have dragged these boots to eight different apartments since then. The only time I ever wore them seriously was when I would take the trash out in Chicago. They came in handy crossing the marshy ground beneath the L tracks.

And then something happened.

I moved to the West Village. My Wellington boots were on sale in the uber-trendy boutiques all around the meatpacking district surrounding my apartment.

I know you know I’m being serious, because chances are, you own a pair. You may, in fact, own a knock-off pair from J. Crew. Maybe you bought a real pair of Hunter Wellingtons, like mine, from Saks?

I had mine before you had yours.

And now I wear mine with a bit of an ironic smile. Not because I have always thought they were cool, but because I am, in fact, falling in with the crowds who love them, and I was not hipster enough to like them prior to their official coming-out.

But I’ll tell you what? My feet are warm.

Thanks, Mom.


*When Elle’s mom moved to Connecticut, one of her biggest adjustments was coping with the fact that walking the baby became recreational. She lamented going for a walk around the neighborhood with no destination in mind: “At least in the City, if I needed to get Elle out of the apartment, I’d go to the grocery store for one piece of fruit. Here I’m tooling around aimlessly.” I have no sympathy. She shouldn’t have moved to Connecticut.

Friendly.

I know what you’re thinking.

“Where are you, Actchy? Why aren’t you writing?”

Why, indeed?

I don’t know. It’s a little of this and a little of that.

I wonder if I should continue with this blog? I’m clearly not very consistent. And I have this idea knocking around in my head for a book, but I’m not sure what to do with it. Maybe I would like to focus on that for a bit, see if it leads me anywhere.

And yet.

Well, I like writing the blog.

I dunno.

Of course, there are other reasons I’m not writing, including the full-time rearing of Acey. And settling into the new neighborhood. And making new friends.

Making new friends?

Yes. Or, no.

You see, I have a lot of friends already. I really don’t want to make new friends.

But apparently, when you are a new mom, you need new friends.

Even if you already have a lot of friends.

Even if you have friends who have babies.

And even if you have friends who have babies who live in your city.

When you are a new mom, you need friends…who are also new moms…and who have a baby who is exactly the same age as your baby.

You do. Really. You do.

Your old friends will continue to be as important as they always were. They will be your lifeline to your former self. They will remind you of your non-mom persona and encourage you to keep that personality alive. And the ones with babies will also offer invaluable support and sympathy, if needed.

But unless they have a baby the exact same age as yours, your old friends won’t quite fill all of your friendship needs.

You see, if your baby is, e.g., 10 months old, you will have no recollection whatsoever as to his sleeping routine at 7 weeks. There is no room in your brain for yesterday’s sleeping news. All you can think about is this 10 month-old’s far-too-infrequent bowl movements.

Whereas to the parent of a 7 week old, sleep is the only thing in life worth discussing. And that parent needs to talk to somebody in the Same. Exact. Boat.

I’m guessing that this isn’t always the case. The 10 month-old and 7 week-old will eventually be 7 and 6 ½ , and I’m sure they’ll be dealing with basically the exact same things. But it’s just not that way when they’re babies.

Anyway. I learned this the easy way.

Through some amazing trick of fate, I met Obie’s mom. Acey was 7 weeks old.

Obie’s mom lived in our building!
Obie was born four days before Acey!
Obie’s mom was home with Obie!

What would I have done without Obie’s mom?

Nobody else was interested in a conversation that went something like this:

Actchy: So, Acey went down at 8:43 last night.
Obie’s mom: Oh my God. I would die. Why?
Actchy: Because he didn’t nurse until 7:05!
Obie’s mom: Wow. I can’t believe that.

Ugh. What a bad conversation. And yet Obie’s mom was down for it. Hell, she was living it. And so we lived it together.

And then I met Elle’s mom.

I picked up Elle’s mom at the pediatrician’s office. She was easy prey. It took me all of five minutes to get her digits.

She pulled up next to me with her stroller, and lifted out her daughter. Small talk established that Elle was a mere three days younger than Acey. Aaaand, Elle’s mom was a lawyer, comme moi.

I was all, “Would you be interested in getting together some time?”

Score.

Yes, it was a little forward on my part. But she seemed perfectly normal and capable of carrying on a good conversation. And that’s all I was really after.

And when I Googled her (yes, I Googled her), I discovered that she and I had gone to the same law school.

I knew she seemed like a good egg.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it, Obie’s mom, Elle’s mom, and I had all fallen into a delightful trio of new-mommy-girlfriends. Granted, initially our friendship was based entirely on the fact that nobody was getting a good night’s sleep. But things changed, and the babies grew, and despite this, we remained friends.

Good friends.

Good new friends.

Right.

But then Acey and I moved. It was only 15 blocks south of the old place, but it was certainly different not living in the same building as Obie’s mom.

And then…Elle and her mom moved to Connecticut.

Connecticut? Yep. They bought a car and everything. Oooooof.

And now. Well, now Obie and his mom are moving way up to the Upper West Side.

It’s not Connecticut. But it’s practically upstate New York.

WTF, girls? We are supposed to be downtown people!

I must say that because these past nine months have brought us so close, I don’t actually fear that I will lose touch with Obie’s mom and Elle’s mom. I mean, this is the digital age. I’m on Facebook, for crying out loud. I can’t fall out of touch with anybody. Even people I want to lose touch with.

But the new distance does make it difficult to have play dates.

And so I need some new friends.

Friends with babies.

Friends with nearly-eleven-month-old babies, to be specific.

And once I find these friends…then…then I will write.

Right?

We’ll see. Bear with me.

Color me frustrated

Naturally, the GWW text stresses the importance of revision. While your writing may seem pretty good the first time through, it will be one hundred percent better after the fourth or fifth re-write.

Of course, the same thing goes for many things in life. We were very happy with our last apartment, including its décor. However, with respect to our new apartment, we needed to revise our approach to getting to that end product.

When we moved into our old place, we decided to paint. We knew we’d be there for a few years, and thought it was worth it to go through the rigmarole, though it was just a rental. And so we went to Home Depot and chose paint for the living room, bathroom, and kitchen.

It was the first time in our marriage that we had the opportunity to choose colors for our living space. Naturally, we agreed upon almost nothing. The husband wanted Tuscan yellow in the living room. I wanted brown. He wanted navy in the bathroom. I wanted anything other than navy. I wanted red in the kitchen. He wanted anything other than red.

But we compromised. The kitchen is my domain; I got to choose the color. That left my husband to choose the paint for the bathroom. We decided to sample both yellow and brown for the living room, and in the end, went with brown.

Right. Let’s paint.

But.

Um.

We weren’t unpacked. See, it is very difficult to unpack when your living space is small. There’s no place to spread out. You want to unload the box of large utensils but you have to put it to the side until you find the box with the container for large utensils. But there’s no space to put anything “to the side.”

In fact, our apartment looked like this:

We decided that if we were going to paint, we should probably just push everything to the center of the apartment and do it. If we waited until we were unpacked, it’d never get done.

But I was starting a new job. As was my husband. And we had moved to Manhattan, so we didn’t have a car. This made going to Home Depot and loading up on brushes and ladders and drop clothes challenging. To say nothing of the fact that there was no storage space for brushes and ladders and drop clothes when the painting was complete.

And that’s when we decided to bring in Willy.

Okay. So who is Willy? He is both a highly-skilled painter and a highly-functioning alcoholic. My father-in-law discovered him when he was preparing to sell his home. He politely describes Willy as “a character.”

Character. Vagrant. Same-same. To give you an idea, Willy doesn’t have a phone. In order to get in touch with him, it is necessary to call a saloon in Yonkers, NY. He gets his messages from the bartenders.

But he’s a good painter. And he doesn’t charge much.

And so it was that Willy arrived at our unpacked apartment at seven o’clock on the morning I was to begin my new job. I had just exited the shower and was in a bathrobe, so I quickly closed the door to the bedroom and dressed. My husband let him in and gave him instructions. He then left for the office. I emerged from my room to find Willy already at work, accompanied by the blaring AM radio.

Willy began assailing me with questions and stories. He had used the same brown on someone’s study up in Westchester. He missed seeing my father-in-law on a regular basis. He was almost done his novel and heard that I was good at proofreading.

You will recall that I was trying to get ready for my first day of a new job.

“Um, okay, Willy. You can send me your manuscript if you’d like.”
“Thanks, Actchy. It’s great to see you. You know, I was saying to your husband, it’s weird that I never have had the chance to meet your folks.”

Whaaaa? My parents? Um, yes. It is weird that I haven’t introduced my parents to my father-in-law’s painter.

On and on. Eventually, I was ready to go. I bade Willy farewell. But he stopped me.

“I think your husband forgot to leave me some money for lunch.”

Money for lunch? Does one give cash to one’s painter for his meals? Well, okay.
I looked in my wallet. I discovered $10.

“Willy, all I have is a ten. This should get you a sandwich at the bodega.”
“Perfect, Actchy. That’s all I need.”
“Okay. Well, there’s orange juice in the fridge if you’d like.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I had orange juice hours ago.”

Fast forward. Midway through the afternoon, my husband goes in to check on Willy, who was finished the living room and had begun the bathroom.

I receive a call from my sheepish husband.

“Well, the living room looks excellent. But the bathroom looks like the murder scene of one of the Blue Man Group. I’m not sure we can live with this sort of wild blue yonder.”

Wild blue yonder indeed. Hoo-boy: white tiles, and blue paint that was far darker than we ever dreamed.

I refrained from the “I told you so” dance. Sort of. And only because we determined we’d have the same problem with my red kitchen. So the kitchen stayed white.

We sent Willy out for a pastel blue that neither of us would’ve chosen but for the fact that we needed something fast, and hell, it matched a shower curtain that we already owned.

Problem corrected. No more Greek-flag-themed bathroom.

Finally I reached the end of the day. I was exhausted from meeting people and being on my best behavior and figuring out a new computer system. I got home to discover that Willy was done. In fact, he was paid and had left the premises by the time I got home.

And things looked…pretty damn good.

I went into my still-white kitchen.

Huh.

There were four empty 24 oz. cans of Bud Light next to my trash can.

Wow.

I did the math and realized that Willy had a liquid lunch with the sawbuck I gave him.

Well, okay. I mean, I knew he was a drinker. And the paint was no worse for his alcohol intake.

But then I looked in my fridge.

Missing were one half of a block of fancy imported Irish cheese and three of a five-pack of Italian sausages.

We had just moved in; we had almost no groceries. I had picked up the sausages and cheese so that we’d have something at home for dinner my first night of work. I was sort of in a quandary. I saw no evidence of cooking: no pots – dirty or clean. No plates. Had he eaten the sausages raw? Had he cooked them with no container in the microwave? Shudder.

And I then I saw my bottle of Chardonnay.

The bottle of Chardonnay was the last remaining bottle of a wedding gift from my best friend. She had sent us two great bottles of wine each month for six months. I had saved this one, and went through the effort of packing it with my overnight bag for safe transport in my car when we drove from Chicago to New York. It was a celebration bottle. We were going to open it on our first wedding anniversary, which was fast-approaching.

Now it was 50% empty.

And now I was angry.

I called my husband in a rage.

He talked me down. There was nothing we could do at that point, save to contact the pub in Yonkers and ask the bartenders to tell Willy to call me so that I could chew him out.

“For what it’s worth, I did tell Willy to help himself to whatever we had in the fridge.”

Okay. Fair enough. I mean, I had offered him orange juice, too. We didn’t have all that much in the fridge. Regardless, I wouldn’t think that an invitation like that would lead him to open the wine. He was the painter, not a freaking house guest. And really, what house guest opens a bottle of wine without asking?

And for that matter, how did he open the wine? I had absolutely no idea where our corkscrew was.

Amazing. Okay. Let it go.

I checked the freezer. It was with relief that I noted Willy had not defrosted the top tier of our wedding cake, which we had also saved for our first anniversary.

Revision: prior to our move to TriBeCa, I contacted a painter. I gave him the code for a paint color. I mailed him a check.

On moving day, Acey’s nursery was a soft, gentle green.

And our wine reserves were intact.

Moved.

“It’s time.”

He was right. In so many ways.

The movers were done; it was about to rain. My son’s crib needed to be moved into his new room and put together ASAP. It was time to go.

“I just…” my voice trailed off. I looked around, helplessly.

We didn’t own it. But it was ours.

“Remember how relieved you were when you first saw this place?” he asked me.

I did. I just couldn’t get away from work in Chicago when we had to find an apartment in New York, so my husband came out and pounded the pavement. The agent took him all over downtown. When they finally walked into our place, my husband stepped in, looked around, and asked for a lease. I had left it in his hands and he had done me right.

The first time I saw it was the day we moved in. And sure, moving in had been ridiculous. God knows unpacking a Chicago 2BR’s worth of stuff into an NYC 1BR took forever.

But man: this awesome set of windows on the greatest neighborhood in Manhattan. And on Sundays, the soft sounds of the mariachi band that played outside of Los Dados, there on the corner.

The building had a breathtaking roof deck that was home to several of our infamous cocktail parties. We watched fireworks up there, and the aftermath of Captain Sully’s handiwork on the Hudson.

Yeah, the building was replete with characters, but I loved them all.

“It doesn’t feel right empty,” I said.

Probably because it wasn’t empty. I could see the faded areas on the paint where our furniture and pictures had been. I noted the vacant cabinets of the smallest kitchen ever to allow me to work my culinary madness. I traced my finger against the door molding. No, it wasn’t empty. It was so full of memories.

“Well. I won’t miss our neighbors,” he said.

“Good God. Neither will I,” I agreed. “And neither will Acey.”

Acey. I worked through hard labor with him right here on our couch before we left for the hospital. This was his first home. Our doorman met him before much of our family did. I paced up and down this one stretch of floorboards for hours trying to get him to sleep in the wee hours of the morning when he was brand new. He rolled over for the first time right there; that’s where he sat in his bouncy seat when he said “Da Da” for the first time.

When we discovered we were expecting, all of our New York friends would look at our apartment and say, “This place is huge! It’s plenty big enough for a baby!”

Those who lived outside of the City would gasp in horror: “You’re going to stay here when the baby comes?!”

But stay we did. We shifted our living room over, and created a Baby Den. Acey learned to sleep with the noise of the construction right outside his window.

“At least we got to be here for the High Line opening.”

We had a direct view of the hottest new park on the East Coast. Our windows faced its entrance. We watched the creation of the park, the construction of the new hotel that straddles it, the demolition of the old industrial meatpacking building that was adjacent to it. Now that all was said and done, we could see trees and flowers at eye level, twinkling at night with evening lights, on the elevated park. With the old building gone, we had river views. Hell, I even got to see people do unspeakable things in their hotel rooms when I was up doing 4am feedings for all those months.

“I will miss this. My heart hurts.”

“Our new place is awesome. It will be just as special. And it won't have mice.”

“I know. But…”

But…

I pushed Acey’s stroller as we left the apartment for the last time. I wasn’t just teary-eyed. I was crying. My face screwed up and my mouth turned down as the tears started to fall.

Acey had never seen me make such a face.

He laughed at me.

It made me smile.

“Yeah. It’s time to go.”