m visits nyc (lyn)

Should we go to theater?  What about museum-hopping?  Maybe just a nice walk through Central Park?  As we consider these things, we know we’ll do none of them.  M is in NY and we’ll do what we always do and most enjoy:  shop around and have a nice dinner. 

I have coffee and a Vitamuffin before meeting M around 11.  Our first stop of the day is a sample sale for Bindya scarves in mid-town.  M looks even better than when I saw her in August.  Her hair looks great (it always does) and her face looks more sculptured.   I shamelessly ask one of the salesgirls to take a picture.  As the day starts, I think it’d be nice to document our activities in photos.

An hour or so  later, we take the subway down to Soho.  I pretend to be a tourist when I ask the young man next to us to take our picture.  

Our first stop is my new favorite store, M0851.  It’s full of gorgeous leather goods, as well as stunning coats (in both leather and canvas).  Here's me in one of them.  A big size two!

We are in this store for about two hours.  By the time we leave, M is best friends with one of the sales guys, to the point where he is interested in seeing pictures of her house and she’s on his computer giving him a tour.

We are starting to get hungry, but we have more stores to visit and we plan on a big dinner.  Our next destination stop is the Flos lighting store, where we fall in love with lamps of all sorts.  Along the way we go to a flea market, stop at a street vendor who is selling artsy jewelry and who falls in love with M, and a few more stores.   Before we know it, it’s almost 4, and we are now starving, but it’s too late to have lunch.  M’s son Sam and his roommate are meeting us for an early dinner at Il Tinello’s.

As we exit a hip-clothing store, it starts to rain.  Heavily.  We make it back to M’s hotel in Soho, where she gives me six packages of one-point Weight Watchers' mints, which are sold in Boston, but I can’t find anywhere in New York.  I eat two, but M shows more restraint and is satisfied with only one.

M checks out and we slowly make it uptown.  The rain and traffic turn a 15-minute cab ride into a 45-minute one.  I’ve abandoned my interest in documenting the day in photos.  The rain has not been kind to my hair.  We get to the restaurant around 5:45.  Sam and his friend are already there. 

Dinner is amazing, as is the company.  Sam is no longer the adorable young boy I watched grow up.  He’s now a thoughtful, kind, funny, and thoroughly wonderful young man.   He’s exactly the type of kid that any parent would be proud to call their own.

I eat a week worth of points in one night, and have no regrets.  Playing with M is one of my most favorite things to do.