The Party Finally Ends

My weekend in NYC made me realize I used to be a party animal. I used to work, go to grad school and helped renovate our house. That didn't stop us from going out every Friday and Saturday night. We went for dinner and then out to bars, mainly in the Greenwich Village area. We went dancing. We went to CBGB's, The Village Vanguard and The Cookery. We got home at 5 am and slept until noon. Those were the days.

This past weekend started with a jazz concert at a church on 35th Street. My friend Lucette from Jeffersonville (aka my massage therapist) told me that her husband, Thurman Barker, a jazz percussionist, was playing there with his quartet. The warm-up band played contemporary jazz that had my ears hurting, my body vibrating and threw me into a deep zen state so I could survive the dissonance. Thurman's band was a lot more mellow, and interesting too, because he played about 20 different percussion instruments. The pianist was great and so were the guitarists. It was contemporary jazz in a style I could relate to.

Up early the next morning, we drove to Princeton, NJ for the Ivy League Cross Country Championships. We did a lot of walking and cheering. Columbia, who'd hoped to finish first, came second. All the guys were disappointed, including my son Mark who didn't race well.

We drove back to New York where Hurricane Sandy panic was in full swing. Marty couldn't find a parking spot, the pharmacy was overflowing--you'd think the world was about to end. We had a party to go to in Brooklyn so we changed into party wear and took the subway to Downtown Brooklyn. Our friend's mother was celebrating her 90th birthday. The food was great, we knew most of the guests, and the entertainment was a mentalist. We went to the "after party" at our friend's house and didn't get home until 12:30.

Yoga was at 8:30 Sunday morning. We were having a friend over for dinner so we went to the market and spent 40 minutes trying to push our way through the amazing crowd. We didn't need that much. I have to say it was a party-like atmosphere with real New Yorkers actually smiling about long lines.

We decided to do an old-fashioned Sunday afternoon dinner, just in case the hurricane hit, which of course it didn't because it was still hundreds of miles away. I roasted turkey legs and a breast, made stuffing and a raspberry sauce. We also had asparagus with Hollandaise sauce. Shortly after dinner, while we were relaxing in the front room sipping wine, I became undone. I excused myself and went to bed. This was at 5 pm. I forced myself to get up later to have some ice cream, but even that didn't palliate the morose state I'd fallen into. I was physically, mentally and morally exhausted. All I wanted to do was sleep, which I did, for 11 hours.

My party days are over.