Someone's in the City with Mama

Mama Hungry and I had a wonderful time in the city on Tuesday, treating ourselves to several fun stops to enliven the main event at the doctor's office.  I don't know Union Square well, despite working nearby for nine months in our museum's office before the new building opened, but am learning.  Exploring the area on doctor's days is definitely a treat (and much better than the Upper East Side, in the 70s off York, where my other doctor is).  And there is more left to see.  We're hoping to take the kids the next time we go.

First, we went to the Strand, billed as 18 miles of books, used and new.  They've spruced it up since I'd been there last, but it's the same quirky place, with helpful staff helping you navigate the warren of shelves.  I was looking for books by Anne Lamott, whom I see quoted everywhere these days, and was first in literary nonfiction, then in Christianity, which is tucked so far back that if I were a Christian I might be offended at hiding the books in Siberia.  Still, I got her Traveling Mercies, on becoming a Christian after a childhood of atheism (no, I'm not going quite that route, but it does make insightful reading), and chose lots of books by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, and Jack Kornfield in the nearby Buddhism section.  We searched cookbooks, children's books, and all the clearance tables, finding a few more gems.  The photo of the view out the window, with the plastic owl, cab, and Broadway street sign in the drizzling rain (I see owls everywhere now, Shelley!) is from the art section on the second floor.

We also went to Forbidden Planet, the comic book and alt-culture store.  We looked at manga, Star Wars, old metal  lunch kits, t-shirts about video games, and so much more.  I bought a Princess Leia figure, in her Tatooine metal bikini, to go with my shelf of action figures of my avatar.  Too bad there wasn't any Xena stuff.  But perhaps the store is more macho than that (and we were some of the only female customers, though there were several female clerks).

Finally we visited a chocolate shop of Max Brenner, kind of a grown-up's Willy Wonka, with pipes and mixers of chocolate throughout the shop and restaurant.  Here is where we got the chocolate pizza (yes, it was as good as it looked in that picture), a chocolate croissant, and two drinks, an imaginative hot white chocolate chai and an icy hazelnut milkshake.  Plus a few bon bons for us and the neighbor who was watching the kiddos.

Altogether, with the doctor's support of my continued PT and a wait-and-see approach (i.e. no injections for now) plus a different medication to replace the one I stopped (this time, gabapentin, which I'm postponing for a bit to see how PT goes without any meds for awhile), it was a marvelous day.   I actually am excited about having to go back for a follow-up at some future date!