I write, not from bed, but from the coach in the living room while watching Great Canadian Bake Off. It is a rather silly program actually as they are making silly things like Japanese mochi. or something. The great thing is – it does not take all of my attention. Now they are making an Italian cookie sculpture. Not horribly useful . Yesterday I went to brunch at Copper Kitchen and had the BEST Eggs Benedict I have ever eaten my entire life. Bake Off should be making something useful like that. The Eggs Benedict experience is on Instagram, charmingly served by Vadim, a handsome Russian. Our picture will grace this blog.
The Eggs Benedict were the beginning of a wonderful day. There were many highlights. A precious one when A, a waitress at Copper Kitchen said:
She: You made my day!
Me: You made my day by saying that. Can I give you a hug?
She: Please!
After brunch I walked to the HSBC building and found a new dry cleaner and a new art display which shall be featured in a subsequent Instagram and blog. Then it was off to Water Aerobics, the Deep Water version where I stay in the shallow water for right now. Amanda congratulated..
Me: I am so tired!
She: No wonder! You were working so hard.
Me: I loved the way everyone helped put away the dumb bells and the tubes. It is so different from my experience at Dolphin Square, written about on my blog.
She: Yes, it is so gratifying to see. These are such great people.
By the way, in case any of you read about the man meeting capabilities at the YWCA and therefore decide to join you MUST tell them when you register. I confirmed that if you do that I will get a referral prize which I can use toward personal training sessions. If enough of you do this then I may never have to pay for a personal training session with Lukewarm. It will seem like a moral victory. There were promotions at Equinox but they were actually bogus, in my humble opinion. This one is real and I know one person who is, for sure, going to join and mention my name.
After a long soak and chat in the YWCA jacuzzi is was back to the Copper Kitchen for Happy Hour. Again a delight and a meeting with C., who works at Le Soleil – high up on the food chain. It looks like I may have a Jack in my life again – her young son and such a darling according to pictures in the phone of his proud mother. I spoke to the General Manager, such a nice man, about a special rate for a stay vacation. I will go live there for a week and be spoiled rotten and since it is right next door to the YWCA this could mean that I could stay and play and work in several personal training sessions. I guess it will be after Christmas because it is San Francisco next week and then Iceland and London at the end of November and early December.
Then it was home, as DDD was coming for dinner. It was a long agp scheduled get together that was to be lunch but our schedules changed – he due to work and mine a later water aerobics class. He suggested dinner and I said that would be perfect. We had a great time together. I texted afterwards:
Me: We have great fun together.
He: Yes we do. (emoji) We will see each other next week. I will text you.
DDD has a new client, a tremendously talented photographer. Hopefully I will get to see his work next week. I am SO looking forward to it. However, I will not be able to buy any of his works as I have run out of wall space.
I promised more from Judith Newman’s review of sex and relationship books. She reviewed a book: Girl Boner. Newman writes: “My aunt-and probably yours too-had a favorite expression when my cousin and I would gas on and on about some new love interest: “You think you discovered sex?” The author of Girl Boner apparently writes as if she discovered sex and wants to share the news. Apparently the book is “terrifically encouraging, if not exactly filled with surprises. Masturbation, good! Fat-shaming, bad! “ I guess terrifically will be the word of the day, it is an adverb. “with great intensity; to a great extent: incendiary bombs flashed terrifically | the system was expanding terrifically : I feel terrifically frustrated. informal in an extremely good way: she is doing terrifically in the show | [as submodifier] : a terrifically entertaining novel | Sue and I get along terrifically well.”
Newman ends on a sad note, I guess, by reviewing a divorce lawyer’s book. The lawyer describes the situation: “Divorce is, at best, a knife fight in a closet. And the kids are in the closet with you…And the lights are off.” It did make me happy, yet again, that I did not have children. At least I knew who I was stabbing in that dark closet. James Sexton, the divorce lawyer, gives this advice: “You need to say interesting to your mate, which generally involves staying interesting to yourself. Lose your identity in marriage, and you’re likely to loose the marriage.” Sexton gives other advice, such as not withholding sex but using it as a reward for positive change. But this is hilarious, the discussion of social media. His chapter is entitled: “If We Were Designing an Infidelity-Generating Machine, it would be Facebook”. I am pretty much off Facebook, what a waste as I am not presently married. Several proposals but none under serious consideration. There is a new guy in the horizon (not yet met) . His name is Alexander (which is the name of my father). I said to his son: “That is interesting. I need a good Alexander in my life.” We shall see, his son is more handsome but age inappropriate.
But look what happened to age appropriate Leonard Cohen. The Knowledge program about Leonard was so moving – at this moment I can almost not bear to write of it. But I did realize, when listening to his early songs, that Leonard was huge in my life in my early twenties and then again in my early seventies. That is staying power. I love his I’m Your Man. But he is dead, but he was very spiritual. Perhaps we shall meet up in another life. Who knows?
Several chapters of the Great Canadian Bake Off have been playing. Now they are doing chocolate – now that is worthwhile! The guy from Saskatchewan just got kicked off but there is a woman from Alberta still in there. The suspense is horrible. Perhaps two words of the day. “Suspense is a state of mental uncertainty, anxiety, of being undecided, or of being doubtful. In a dramatic work, suspense is the anticipation of the outcome of a plot or of the solution to an uncertainty, puzzle, or mystery, particularly as it affects a character for whom one has sympathy. However, suspense is not exclusive to fiction.”
Of course not exclusive to fiction. Will Alexis meet Alexander? Will she wed for the fourth time? Will she and Leonard meet in another life? Why did she get divorced three times when she did not loose her identity? I do have an answer to the last query – I am not sure that any of the three husbands had an identity. I can be so terribly cruel, but honest. Sexton pointed out: “What we all like to think of as constructive criticism of your mate is actually just criticism.”
