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peewees and a yard kitten
Saturday, August 19 2017
This morning after she had walked the dogs, Gretchen and I decided to spend our morning in New Paltz, where we would ultimately have a spaghetti lunch at the Plaza Diner (which consistently has the best spaghetti in the Hudson Valley). First, though, we would be going to Commissary, the quirky modern-retro vegan café. On the drive down 32 between Rosendale and New Paltz, we picked up a young man who was hitch-hiking, and went out of our way to drop him off at the bus station. (Interestingly, though Gretchen will not sign a donor card for fear that her organs will end up in an asshole, she seems predisposed to helping out random people thumbing rides on the side of the road; perhaps this is because it's hard to be an asshole when you don't even have a car at your disposal.)
Gretchen had sent a Facebook message to our old college friend Kristen (who lives in New Paltz; visiting her was my first exposure to the Hudson Valley back in 1989), and she appeared out of nowhere while we ordering at Commissary. Kristen had both of her kids with her, whom I had not seen since they were babies if at all. Her oldest is 13 and has an iPhone, and, though she seems fairly mature, she has not yet entered the moody eye-rolling "you're embarrassing me, mom!" phase that most teenage girls go through. The other daughter is substantially younger, though clearly bright and socially mature for her age. Both are half Senegalese; Kristen husband (and a teenage son we haven't met) come from Senegal and are naturalized US citizens. (We hired Kristen's husband and his West African friends to paint our living room nearly 15 years ago; it was more repainted more recently by Sarah the Vegan's then-boyfriend.)
I ordered a double soy cappuccino, which ended up being more of a quad cappuccino because the standard cup comes with two shots of espresso. It was incredible, as was the croissant. The kids, meanwhile, were freaking out about the chocolates and cookies, which were surprisingly expensive. But if one can't afford something at Commissary, there's always the "pay what you want" socialist soup and the Mitzvah Wall, where others have pre-paid for food or drinks for those matching certain specified criteria. (Today one of those was "someone who works for Goldman-Sachs," which was kind of hilarious.)
Somehow our conversation with Kristen and the kids came around to the topic of names and which ones are popular in the various generations. To the kids, names like "Michelle" sound like grandma names. "Heather" sounds to them like a middle-aged woman's name. Kids today have names like "Emma" and "Sarah" (which apparently never gets old).
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Spaghetti at the Plaza Diner was exactly the way it always is: perfection. I also got an order of fries, and there ended up being so much food that we took a bunch of our spaghetti to go.
Back at the house soon after returning, I took a nice long nap that left me feeling shitty when I eventually awoke. Meanwhile Gretchen had sprayed insect repellant on herself and was reading in the yard while tiny Janet the Kitten played in the yard. I noticed at some point that the sounds of peewees (the more forest-loving flycatcher relative of the phoebe) were making lots of calls nearby. I've read that they nest later in the season than phoebes, though I haven't seen birds using the sites normally used by the phoebes.
This evening, I was obsessed with Facebook again and busied myself making yet more memes. Here are a couple:
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