Have gone into The City twice in three days. She'ssssssssssss That Girl! The first night it was raining pitchforks and goblin bastards. My blue loafers gave up their blue dye so effectively that my feet were blue-black for two days, and my toenails resembled birds' claws. I walked around the Village for awhile and ended up in a Mexican restaurant. The scene was young, b/c everyone in the Village seems to be young, and it was meat-markety and very loud in the place I picked. The food, though, was cheap and somewhat delicious, and the waitress treated me well. I decided to smile benevolently on the drunken loud young people and read my book while eating my enchiladas Suizas. Ended up at the Strand, my pants wet up to my knees.

The second time I was with Primera (and one of my wonderful online friends and her child) and got to do one of my Five Things that I do in the city: see St. Patrick's, which I did get to do yesterday; go to my two favorite bookstores; go to the Metropolitan and see my favorite sad-faced Romanesque madonna, who hasn't been on exhibit the last couple of times I've gone; walk around Grace Church; walk around my old neighborhood. I'm like a homing pigeon in my predictability. If I do a couple of those things, I'm happy; if not, I have a vague sense of longing and waste. This weekend I was happy b/c I got to do three of my Top Five things.

Perhaps I'll take Primera in to show her the tree at the Metropolitan, or the one at Rockefeller Center--satisfy my own Jewish ambivalence about Christmas while piquing hers. Maybe not, though.

Also, we went to the Nintendo store, and as I sank gratefully onto the ledge where a couple of other parents were perched, a young teenager asked me to watch his stuff, and I knew immediately that he was one of Our People. We are everywhere. It must have been one of the world epicenters for Asperger's, and I do think I exert a magnetic force, anyway. I was tempted to strike up a conversation with his mom and do the secret handshake but didn't get to "overhear" an opening.