1-1-11 (lyn)

The first day of the New Year and food temptations are everywhere.

Carol calls and invites us to brunch.  By the time Alexander and her son Matthew wake up, it’s noon.  So we meet around 1.  Carol is a great cook, and so once again, I eat without caution for another day.  She makes spectacular French toast that I first mistake for scrambled eggs and ask how she gets them cut so evenly.  Has it really been that long since I’ve eaten one?  She makes them with challah bread (saying they absorb the milk, honey, and eggs better).  They are so good that I am afraid I may now want to make them.  I try a small piece of turkey sausage and fortunately don’t like it, and then eat a lot from the zero-point fruit bowl I made.  Matthew has been a friend of Alexander’s since first grade.  He’s now 6’3”, which still surprises me, although I’ve watched him grow up.

Alexander meets some friends for dinner while I grab two slices of pizza and then have a small piece of leftover apple pie.  I’m meeting Robyn at 9pm to see a play in the Village that begins at 10.  I had tried to bribe Alexander to come with me, even promising that if he comes, he doesn’t have to see a play with me for the rest of 2011.  It doesn’t work.  One of his friends calls me, all Eddie Haskall-like, and tries to convince me that he needs to see Alexander more than I do.  How can I resist such a valiant effort?

Robyn and I see Play Dead, an entertaining, audience-participation production about the dead and macabre.  The low-key special effects are amusing, and cause Robyn and I, along with many others, to giggle and shriek when touched by unknown spirits in total darkness. 

The theater is next to a small hole-in-the wall called Mamoun’s Falafel.  We’ve been told that it’s the best falafel place in all New York.  Why else would 30 or so people be waiting in line at 10 pm for a $2.50 sandwich?  At midnight, the line is down to about 5 people so Robyn stops in and buys one.  It looks and smells amazing; Robyn confirms that it is.

Food is everywhere, so much of it is really really good, the choices are endless, and yes, it can even be cheap.  It’s easy to grow fat in New York, though I know I won’t.  I like my Paige size 28 jeans too much.  And my tiny black All Saints skirt.  And my skintight black jacket.  And all my other little clothes.