After Mom fell and broke her shoulder walking up the stairs at the Frick Museum, and got a diagnosis and a sling at a walk-in Urgent Care, we had lots of stuff to do.
We left the Medrite Lenox Hill Urgent Care at 5:00 and our final show was going to start at seven. It had been pouring buckets and it was still raining, and I felt it’d be hard to get a cab, so I decided we’d take the short walk over to 5th Avenue and catch a bus back to the hotel.
Hmm, why didn’t I get in a cab with my poor mother who had just broken her shoulder? I think it was because traffic was pretty horrible; besides being rush hour, there was the rain. And we were on 3rd Avenue, which ran uptown, and we wanted to go downtown. It was only a half mile to the park…
But when got to the bus stop on 5th Avenue, there were huge lakes of water in the gutters, and a bus pulled up but then didn’t open its door, and then sped off. This happened three times, and WTF??!!!
A couple of other people had also been waiting and they decided to walk instead. So, so did we. It was only about another half mile, and only gently raining…and as I type this I feel like I’m a horrible daughter, making her poor mom walk all that way. But of course she managed it and we were both grateful to be back at our place. But like I said, the show started at seven. And here we were, ready to go at 6:25!
The musical was “The Great Gatsby” and the theater was the Broadway theater, a short three tenths of a mile walk. But I guess I was a little agitated from the day’s events and realized that I was taking us to the altogether wrong theater. Luckily we hadn’t gone too far out of our way and were in our seats before the show started.
It was…ok. Lots of spectacle, two real cars on the stage, many big dance numbers and fireworks and, well, I just didn’t care about the characters. As we watched it it occurred to me that I’d never read the story and never saw the movie, can’t say why, but I wasn’t crazy about it. Also we were both a little distracted by Mom’s break.
As we walked back to our hotel one last time, we were hungry and tired and didn’t want to go out of our way. We ended up eating at La Grand Boucherie, a fancy French restaurant close to our hotel on 6 1/2 Ave that we’d walked past a few times. I’d glanced at the menu and it had seemed crazy expensive but at this point we didn’t care.
The place was almost deserted at 10:30 on Monday night. We had the Boeuf Bourguignon for two, and when it arrived in a tureen it was enough for at least four people. This is when we realized Mom was going to have trouble eating since her right arm was incapacitated. The beef stew was fine, and we got delicious bread. It made me remember that I used to make beef bourguignon. I guess I won’t do that anymore because we don’t usually eat beef.
The highlight of the dinner was our server, Rodrigo, who I believe was from Belarus, but I’m probably wrong. Rodrigo sounds Spanish. But he explained a lot of stuff about the World Cup to us, including that tickets to the games were outrageously priced, and people came from all over the world to attend and sometimes sold their cars and other big-ticket items to be able to go. Crazy. He took our picture after the meal.
It was a very beautiful place and had the circumstances been different we’d have enjoyed it more.
We walked out into the covered atrium and watched the rain coming down in blowing sheets. Of course.
We stood around trying to figure out how to proceed, and not far from us was a petite woman stuffing her red hair into a clear plastic bag and I said, “that looks like Kathy Griffin.” We talked about the rain to a tall Australian fellow near us, and I said, “Is that Kathy Griffin?” and he said yes, and I asked if he was her friend, and he said he was “on her team.” Of course, a celebrity is going to be out with her team.
I had no hesitancy because of our unfortunate day, so I walked right up to her and told her I thought she was great, and could we please get a photo. She was friendly and down-to-earth and gracious and said of course, but a woman on her team suggested that Kathy remove the plastic bag, but Kathy didn’t care about it. Terrific, terrific.
A very nice ending to an otherwise fraught day. We dashed back to our hotel through the rain which wasn’t quite so torrential in a measured and careful way so nobody fell down anymore. Whew.
Well, the day didn’t end just then because I had to go back in the rain to get Mom some Advil and some Tylenol at the drugstore down the street. But by the time I left the hotel the rain had stopped, thank goodness. I can’t be sure, but I’m pretty sure we both slept well that night because we were so exhausted.
Ok then,
Mrs. Hughes.