the one con­stant in life: ponies

Well, I must con­fess that I am in one of my favorite moods right now: still clear­ing up in a mild sort of way from one din­ner par­ty, and already plan­ning my menu for… tomor­row’s din­ner par­ty. I know that sounds like the Sev­enth Cir­cle of HE-Dou­ble Hock­ey Sticks for some of you, but I love it. Tomor­row I’ll tell you how tonight’s din­ner went in more detail than mere­ly SUB­LIME, but right now, I am wax­ing all nos­tal­gic. We just heard, via John’s moth­er’s eagle eye to the nation­al (yea, inter­na­tion­al for us) press, of the clos­ing of Clare­mont Rid­ing Acad­e­my after 115 years. I have mixed feel­ings about this, since while Avery began her love affair with ponies there (look how TINY she was! four years ago! and how big she has got­ten now), it was­n’t a great sta­ble, the hors­es weren’t in great con­di­tion, she did­n’t learn much. However.

It was in cen­tral Man­hat­tan! For­get that, it was in just plain Man­hat­tan, the last of its kind. And now, poof. There have been sug­ges­tions that the clo­sure is due to the unbe­liev­able real estate val­ue of the build­ing. Fair enough. But when I look at this dear lit­tle face and body, and how dear and tall she has become, I have to give cred­it where cred­it is due: Clare­mont began in tall. Rest in peace, 89th Street between Ams­ter­dam and Colum­bus (since all address­es in New York include the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of between what and what).

Any­way, tomor­row I await the arrival of one of my old­est friends, who I have not seen in 10 years. Cyn­thia was one of my trea­sured col­lege room­mates, lo these 20 years ago, and her hus­band Mark was one of John’s room­mates. I think they’re bring­ing two chil­dren I have nev­er met. That is, I have nev­er met their two chil­dren and I think they’re bring­ing them. It will be a marathon of… beyond “catch­ing up,” more like, “Who did you become?” I can’t wait. So back to plan­ning the menu… And Hap­py Memo­r­i­al Day. I won­der how the Indy 500 went?