bird by bird

St. Patrick's Cathedral We lit a candle for you! Let the rain fall down! We found the Easter Bunny at Rockefeller Center.  My NYC family on Easter! DP, me, and our ham nugget

Cut to.. a few weeks ago when MR sent me this book . It's so fun to read about places that I see every single day and  to know that these amazing and true love stories all started there, in that park or that train stop. Reading these stories has allowed me to get pretty creative in my own fantasies, too. I imagine a tall stranger with thick hair and chocolate eyes approaching me on a park bench. He asks me what I'm reading, and then gets down on one knee and proposes a cup of coffee. I say, "Yes," and we fall in love and share books and flip flops and starburst (because he'll let me have all the reds and pinks). But then the reality begins to sink in and the more times that I sit at a park bench in Union Square or ask for directions in Times Square and no tall, dark man asks me for his hand in coffee, I am more skeptical of this possibility. Men don't just come up to you and ask you out. Cut to... a couple weeks ago when I watched this film on Netflix. The

On Tuesday night, I came home exhausted to realize that I had locked my keys in my apartment, and there was no way for me to get into our building or our apartment. EH was with friends in Central Park, but just as I was about to ask her to come home to let me in, Angel's barely English-speaking brother saw me standing outside the front door, and he let me inside the building. He went to get Angel and I was so relieved! Angel would have a spare key and could let me in. But then through a conversation in very broken Spanglish, I learned that Angel doesn't have a spare key to our apartment. I was both disappointed that he couldn't let me into my apartment and relieved that he couldn't let himself into my apartment. As Angel was trying to explain this to me, Angel's bro left and came back with a hammer and screw driver. I hoped that what I was imagining was not about to happen. But it did. Angel wedged the screwdriver between the door and the door jam, and POP opened

I don't know why this keeps happening, but people keep trusting me to lead young, barely English-speaking students on field trips. See what I mean?? Summer 2009. I drove the kids in my multicultural youth group using the van we borrowed from an Assisted Living Center.  God knows what people thought when they pulled up next to us at stoplights. Summer 2010 I took my ESL Summer Institute students on weekend trips around South Dakota including a Sunday trip to Blue Dog Lake in Waubay, SD. I took them on a tour of the lake in my dad's boat, and it was the very first time that I had ever loaded and driven the boat all alone. I'm happy to report that no one drowned, though Hao did come dangerously close. Spring 2011. I took my Zoni Twelve, as I liked to call them, on a field trip to Central Park. The park part was easy, but getting all of them through the subway station and on the right train without losing them or forgetting them was a challenge... so say the lea

LS introduced me to this column earlier this year, and since EH has a Sunday subscription of the NY Times, I get to read it in print every seven days. I was talking about the column in the teacher's lounge the other day and one of the Polish teachers told me about this story . Even though the closest I've come to a classroom romance was when my Palestinian student bought me a cup of coffee in the cafeteria last week, I still love the notion that love can happen anywhere, even in the most inopportune times and places. And when it does, it's best to be like a semicolon and precede with caution. 

I played Wizard of Oz over the dinner table with this man. He was the Cowardly Lion. I was Toto.

I took these pictures after I put the kid-o's to bed

Thanks for hanging in there, friends! I'm alive, I swear, but just barely. So much has happened in the past couple of weeks that I don't know where to begin.. but I'll try to summarize while it's still fresh. I'll also try to call, email, and message you back soon. I'm charging my batteries (the literal and figurative) this weekend, so I'll try to make it happen! Since the beginning of April, I have been offered three jobs, accepted two, and quit one. I worked more hours than I didn't work and spent more time standing than I spent sitting or laying. I had no idea what I was doing most of the time, but I mastered the art of winging it. I frantically looked up recipes, threw together lesson plans, and prayed the taxi driver knew where he was going (because I sure as hell didn't). Monday through Friday, I spent 10 hours a day teaching ESL to students who often came from countries that I have never heard of. I learned every single one of their names:

      44 hours of teaching ESL + 28 hours of babysitting the Senator's twins + 15 hours of commuting time on the train = 87 working, traveling, and generally un-free hours So much to write.. not. enough. time.

It's been a rough couple of weeks. Too good, too bad, too fast, and too slow, and just when I was about to think that my love for NYC may be unrequited, this bad boy showed up in my mailbox. This book gives me a little hope, but the note inside from MR gives me a lot of hope.  Thank you for reminding me what I'm doing here. :) It's a book.. about love... in NYC. YES, PLEASE!