This weekend’s highlight was a day trip to NYC that managed to cover a lot of ground. My two older boys had gone into the city with their school music program from Thursday to Saturday. The band played a concert on Thursday at Holy Trinity Church and then on Friday the choir performed in Carnegie Hall. I came in for the second one.
I took the 11:02 a.m. Acela from Philadelphia and met a friend for lunch at 1 p.m. It was fun to catch up (and reminisce about the trip we took last spring with our daughters to Paris!). Then I got in a cab and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the afternoon.
I had no particular agenda — mostly just wandering around, but one highlight was this massive sculpture headlining the feminist revision of Chinoiserie exhibit (see the picture accompanying this post for Yeesookyung’s work). I also spent some time studying the Egyptian miniatures that were uncovered from a tomb, featuring scenes of a brewery, a garden, a bakery, etc. I also enjoyed seeing a few Picassos and Joan Miró pieces, having just been at those museums a few weeks ago.
Then I walked south through Central Park back to midtown. The park was just gorgeous with spring color — all the cherry trees, magnolias, forsythia and so forth out in bloom. There was a lot of people watching too as everyone was enjoying good weather on a Friday evening. I then got a quick sushi dinner in the theater district, and headed over to Carnegie.
It was so fun to see my son’s choir perform. They were the second ensemble to go (it was a choir festival) and they performed several pieces (including an arrangement of “Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal,” which our church choir had done too). I think the kids really enjoyed the experience of being in that venue!
I will admit I slipped out before the very end because I realized it was going to be impossible to get out in the middle of the fourth set of music (different choirs). The concert was going on for a long time and I had to catch the last train out, but I got to hug my son and congratulate him during an intermission so that was good.
Then it was a long trip back on the 11:23 p.m. train to Philly — I wasn’t aware that train actually stays in Philadelphia for approximately 3.5 hours in the middle of the night. People just sleep on it there in the station, then continue on to DC in the morning. So the lady next to me was very glad to see me exit so she could spread out! I made it home at 1:30 a.m.
One reason I needed to make it back — my husband was on a 7:30 a.m. flight to his cousin’s wedding in Chicago the next morning. Fortunately I didn’t really hear him leave, and I was able to sleep until almost 9. None of the little kids woke me up! I don’t really want to think about how late that means the 5-year-old was probably up with my husband but I guess he got the bad end of that one.
The rest of the weekend involved a lot of driving around. There was some logistical anxiety as the 10-year-old was going to a birthday party from 6-8 p.m. on Saturday, and the two older boys needed to be picked up at the high school at approximately 7 p.m. on Saturday — though this was entirely dependent on how much traffic the buses hit coming from NYC. Normally the 17-year-old drives the two of them to/from school but the school hadn’t let us leave a car there for two days. My attempts to find a carpool for the 10-year-old hadn’t worked but the buses managed to get there right at 7 p.m. so it was all fine. I got the 10-year-old settled in at the party (while the 13-year-old was babysitting the 5-year-old), went to the high school and got the boys, brought them home and had a solid 10 minutes to sit there before I needed to go back out to get the 10-year-old. These are the sorts of things I spend my life thinking about.
Sunday featured church as usual (though kind of not as usual, as I’ve missed the last two weeks!). I went to choir rehearsal, then drove back to get the three younger kids and they all went to their classes. In mid-afternoon I went over to the Haverford College nature preserve and ran 7.9 miles (according to my step counter – not sure how accurate it is, but that would track with doing 11-minute miles and the amount of time I spent running). This run felt reasonably good, with pretty spring colors against the gray sky, and only a sprinkling of rain in the middle, which makes me feel a little more confident about Broad Street, which is coming up in a month.
Meanwhile, my husband had landed, came home, and took 4 of 5 kids to the Minecraft movie. Perhaps you think maybe one child was too sophisticated or not interested? Nope — the other kid had plans to see the Minecraft movie with friends a little later (and not at the same theater). So after my run and a brief grocery store trip, I brought that kid to the theater, came home, and typed this up.
On the agenda this week: formatting the book manuscript. It is getting close! But won’t be out for another year so there is still time to make it better…