Today I had dinner with my ex-sister-in-law Phyllis, my niece Lauren and her husband Shahab, and my nephew David and his girlfriend Kelly. Dinner was great -- getting there was a major disaster!
Every once in a while I start crying out of the clear blue. I think I am doing well, catch a glimpse in the mirror, and burst into tears. This goes along with screaming "Why did you do this to me?" at the top of my lungs. These moments are occurring less often as time passes but they still occur -- and it occurred today while I was putting freshly laundered sheets and towels into the linen closet. Sometimes doing the things David used to do that I now have to do by myself just strikes a nerve.
Since I didn't have to leave for the city until 5:00 PM, I had the time to sit down and read a bit to calm myself down before I had to start getting ready. Reading helped but I was still a bit unnerved by the time I left at 5:00. I had made our dinner reservation at ViceVersa on 51st St near 8th Ave for 6:00 PM and it is only a 40 minute ride according to my GPS so I figured that I had given myself plenty of time on a Sunday evening. In just under 40 minutes after leaving my house, I emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel and was about 1 minute from the parking garage. I was thrilled that the drive had been so easy.
Unfortunately, the gods decided that they had made things too easy. I usually turn left off Dyre Avenue onto 40th St after coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel and then head uptown on 10th. However, my GPS wanted me to make a right onto 42nd St and take 8th Ave uptown. Since the garage I wanted to park in is on 8th Ave, I decided to follow my GPS. Big mistake! What the GPS and I both didn't know was that there was a street fair on 8th Ave and it was closed from 42nd to 52nd. Traffic crawled and when I finally got to 8th I couldn't make the turn. Finally crawled on to 6th Ave where I could make the turn an head uptown.
Tried calling my niece Lauren to let her know what was happening and wound up calling my daughter-in-law Lauren instead. My car doesn't let me initiate a call while I am driving. That means that I have to initiate the phone call using my cell phone's contact list. When the call goes through it is diverted to the car's bluetooth system. Well trying to make that call while dodging traffic and pedestrians is tricky and I wound up calling the wrong Lauren. So after I let my DIL know why I accidentally called her I had to try once again to get through to my niece.
Finally got to 6th Ave and then turned onto 51st St to find that 51st was clogged. I parked in the first garage I saw on 51st and walked/ran the three remaining blocks to the restaurant in heels. It took me 40 minutes to get from my house into the city. It took an hour and 20 minutes to travel less then 1 mile from the tunnel exit to the restaurant. Needless to say, there was a lot of slamming of the steering wheel and cursing out other drivers especially those from out of state who don't know how to drive in that sort of congestion and only make a bad situation worse.
Everyone was waiting for me when I finally got to the restaurant. They had eaten some appetizers before I came but waited for me before ordering dinner. At least I had a good time once I was there -- the Cosmo certainly helped. And Phyllis who has been divorced for almost 20 years fully understood what I am going through and was very sympathetic.
FYI - it took 45 minutes to get home. Yes, I could have hit traffic coming and going but I didn't. Thank god for small things!
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