let's pretend it's still October 5

...and that I have enough energy and brain cells on line to write a post right now. I had the bright idea that I needed to take the kids into the city after school today. We went to the Mid-Manhattan Library, then to Grand Central Station (yup), got some groceries at the marketplace, then back on the subway home.

It probably goes without saying that there are lots of weird and rude people out there (and lots of nice ones, too), and they all come together at rush hour.

But I'll say it anyway. Trying to marshal two active kids, one in a stroller who wants to get out when she needs to stay in, and stay in when we need her to climb stairs, is "a Challenge." Luckily, a very nice woman carried the (empty) stroller up the stairs at Fifth Avenue so I could concentrate on keeping Stella from running down 42nd Street. Other fellow humans were not as helpful, like the crazy man who decided it was his calling to tell me to "calm down, Miss" when I was holding Stella down in her stroller on the platform at Queensborough Plaza. (It took me a minute to realize he was not just a garden-variety busybody, but really did have a screw loose.)

Then there are the lovely folks who make no moves to allow room for a dazed mother with her kiddies (one of whom has a fairly obvious disability) to sit, or even stand comfortably with the stroller, and then give the lucky mum dirty looks when the stroller accidentally bumps against the foot they have so generously extended into the middle of the aisle.

I was going to post a fuzzy photo I took of the kids on the train, but I think one of my fellow new yorkers must have stolen my digital camera while I was distracted by one kid or another. [UPDATE: found the camera, obviously.]

Remind me: why did I think it was a good idea? Oh. It was "An Adventure." And I got some really good baby bok choy.