Why is it taking all day to do the promo grid – I ask you why? Ergh. There is so much stuff to do at work these next couple of weeks, but I refuse to stay late. Stop the insanity. Hoochie mama!

My sister and I decided to surprise Mom for Mother’s Day, so we both flew home without telling her, and then showed up on her doorstep, like two little puppies looking for a home. It was fun. We had a really great time.

We also visited with my grandmothers. One of them is 100 – and is still pretty coherent. The other one is a bit younger, but she’s taken a turn in the past few months. She’s become paranoid and delusional. It’s heartbreaking. You wonder where her mind is making this stuff up. She’s convinced that my aunt is using a computer to do all these horrible things to her. She kept asking, “can you believe anyone would be so mean to me?” People are also following her around. She said she wishes she had someone big like me to take care of them for her. I assured her that I’d take the two guys stalking her, throw them over my shoulders like a couple of potato sacks and take ’em to the curb. She seemed to like that. At one moment she’ll be fine, and the next she’s worried about people controlling her with computers.

Back to the promo grid.

Today I took:
– a rental car
– a plane
– a taxi
– a bus
– a subway
– another bus
– a ferry
– another bus
– another bus
– and a lot of walking in between all those.

Okay, after Cookie and Barry I decided to do a little more walking and now have a new favorite place. It’s another pier not far from the one I was just at. There’s not much green here, just some trees growing out of planters, but again, it’s quiet. It’s not that wide but it juts out into the water fairly far. Right now I’m staring at the GWB… The city is gorgeous. There’s a guy fishing with about six rods set up. He’s reeling in something as I’m typing this… What a great night.

PIX OF THE DAY: My new pier.
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Barry Manilow just walked by with two dogs, a young woman, and a little kid wearing a Batman suit complete with cape and Yankees cap.

This is becoming and odd afternoon.

So right after that last post, I decided to start reading my book. I only had it open for a few minutes when an older African-American woman came up and asked me where those helicopters were coming from – for some reason the sky seemed to be full of them. I pointed out the heliport across the water. She asked if she could join me, and as soon as I said “Sure,” she sat down beside me on the bench. I wasn’t really sure what to make of this, but a couple of hours later she got up and went her own way. In those two hours she talked, and I listened (chiming in occasionally) about her dog (Snowball) that her son had taken from their Jersey City home and had let loose in the streets of Newark, just because. She told me how dogs could sense evil. She wondered if it was okay if she helped her son with his Walk-a-thon (some people had told her that it was wrong to help him raise money). She told me about another dog she had when she was little. She had a crib for her doll babies, but she used to let him sleep in it – she’d even dress him up in her clothes. Later someone in the neighborhood poisoned him. She said she likes to explore, to go places, she’s not content sitting still. As we watched the ferries come and go, she mentioned that she wanted to take her youngest son out on it for a ride. She doesn’t think anyone got out of the World Trade Centers alive. She believes they’ve come a long way with cancer, because when she was little you could see the cancer when people had it, you could see holes in their flesh from where it was eating them alive. At some point in the middle of all these dozen or so stories, I put my book away.

I’m not really sure how to describe those two or so hours… Eventually she decided it was time to go. “I’m Cookie, it was nice talking to you.” I introduced myself and returned the compliment. Then as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone.

When I moved into my new neighborhood last year, which actually was once my old neighborhood about six years ago, I didn’t do much exploring. I really haven’t done much of anything this past year, other than work and then come home and either shutdown or do more work. I guess you could call it a funk. But right now, I’m sitting on a park bench, on the water with a mocha frappuccino, and I’m only five minutes from my apartment. So, I’ve learned that there’s a Starbucks a few blocks away and a decent waterfront promenade just beyond that. I need to explore more. Actually I just need to do anything other than working more.

This place isn’t as nice as the park I had been going to in the past, but it’s a lot more convenient. It’s also quieter, which is fine right now because I’m not really in the people watching mood anyway. For some reason I’ve really been disliking humans lately – I’ll probably write more on that later. There are six people here now, spread out over three blocks, which is the perfect amount. There aren’t any boom boxes blasting, or kids screaming – not that those sounds are always unpleasant or unwanted, but right now the sounds I’m listening to are enough. There’s the little clicking sound a ten-speed bike makes when you’re coasting. The waves are making that lapping sound as the water licks at the pier. Occasionally there’s a car driving past. The sailboats in the marina are making dinging sounds as little boat parts bang against the masts in the breeze. And there are the helicopters. I’m across from Chelsea right now… But what this really means is that I’m at just the point on the Hudson where the helicopters taking off from the midtown heliport swing out to start their approach or liftoff. I don’t mind actually, I love the sound of helicopters but I’m wondering if it drives people away. Yet another reason to love helicopters?