Mitzvah girl all day

First of all woah, a blog post two days in a row, this is a rarity i'm sure but I feel good right now and I feel like writing. I just watched Girls and it actually ended on a positive note this night and it gave me a boost of positive energy, especially as I simultaneously finished my art project but I'll get into that later. Today I woke up, made a cream cheese and cheddar cheese and chive omelette and then set off to Penn Station. I think I mentioned this in my previous post... I probably should've reviewed it so as not to be redundant but meh, here we are. Judy (Pearl's daughter) is awesome, she reminds me of Janeane Garofalo. I love Janeane Garofalo btw. Martha and I saw her preform at UBC one time but we didn't have a magical moment like I wanted. It would've made my year if she had at least heckled me or something...but I digress. Judy is a funny/spunky/smart art teacher with successful children. Her mother, Pearl, is my step-grandma of sorts. I stayed with Pearl for a couple days two years ago when I was in New York. She is wonderful. Judy and I took the Long Island Railroad up to Rockville to the assisted living home where Pearl is lives now. Pearl is still very smart and mostly lucid. Once Judy introduced me to her she remembered my name for the rest of the visit (which is more than I can say for most people I meet) and I think she remembered how she knows me but she was very fuzzy on things like relationships. She often thinks Judy is her aunt or mother, things like that. Pearl wanted to give us things to make us happy. She kept trying to give Judy sweaters that Judy had bought for her. It's sweet but I couldn't help but keep making connections to infancy, like when toddlers are always trying to hand you things...except they usually try and snatch it back right away so maybe this analogy doesn't work. Although on the way to Pearl's room we passed the "craft area" and it reminded me so much of elementary school. Big letters painted on the wall that said "inspire" and "create" and there was a display of paper mache masks that the seniors had made...I did that exact same activity in fifth grade! I don't really understand it but there seems to be some sort of cyclical pattern in behavior or needs. This feels like it's going to be a long post. Bare with me I've got two more mitzvahs to share before the day is done. Judy and I take the train back to the city (after popping our head into a cathedral next to the train station) turns out Judy has been commissioned all over the place, one time she made a fresco on the ceiling of a bank in North Carolina. Awesome. So we part at Penn Station and I take the E to the L, back to Brooklyn, then transfer to the G to go to Wendell's house. He lives in the...well next to the projects, but I was happy to be exploring a new neighborhood and was cold but beautiful out. Look I took a picture!

He wanted me to help him figure out how to create a vaulted ceiling out of paper for this installation he and his artist collective are working on. This part of the project sounds amazing and we might actually be able to pull it off. At first I was confused and frustrated because I had never really considered the construction of a vaulted ceiling before, this only needs to be a representation and not structural of course but still the shape of it was frustratingly obscure until I figured out that it was only two shapes converging... long story short is I think I have a handle on it now and I just need to spend a few hours with the computer at work to suss it out. Before I got to Wendell's I was getting texts from my friend Grace asking me to help her move her bed frame to her new apartment. I kinda wanted to help but since I already had a plan for the rest of my day I was trying to think of a polite way to decline, but then offered to buy me a cheeseburger and a beer afterwards. You guys. It has been way too long since I've had a cheeseburger, an unhealthy amount of time. And so I call her and plan to come to her place after Wendell's, and I do. I leave Wendell's house at 5:30 get back on the G, go to Grace's old apartment, in ANOTHER neighborhood I had never seen. We maneuver her Ikea bed frame (still in its assembled form, I guess she didn't have a drill or something) through her kitchen, down the stairs out onto the sidewalk. We walk it about 10 blocks, this is a full bed frame by the way, to her new apartment, in this cool graffiti industrial area where Hailey and I walked that one time, up two flights of stairs and into her new apartment where her new roommate and her Austrian boyfriend are animatedly watching the Super Bowl. I am starved to death because in my activity I skipped lunch. We finally get back on the L, go 4 stops and get a burger and beer from Dumont Burger so inexplicably amazing. I was so full afterwards, walking back to the subway I actually burped something solid and I didn't even care. It was worth it. I'm sorry if that was a gross over share but it is the only way I can figure to describe how good that burger was. Then I come home, exhausted from food, it's maybe 10pm. I watch two old episodes of 30 Rock and then new episode of Girls and I finish my doodle for what will eventually be the back of my new business card. I love it. It turned out exactly how I imagined I wanted it to, and now I'm going to sleep with a pleasant feeling of accomplishment.

My birthday is this week, but more on that later, you've read enough for now. Go rest your eyes.