The people of NY

As we were approaching our building from a short walk this afternoon, a somewhat elderly woman approached me telling me about how she had all of this cheese. She said she wanted to see if she could sell the cheese but told herself if she couldn't find anyone to buy the cheese, she would give it away. I politely smiled and nodded trying to understand her broken English.
My kids were starting to wander away so I wasn't paying too much attention to her ramblings, but I heard bits about open-heart surgery, kittens, noodles and of course, the 2 pound block of American Cheese.
I rounded my kids up and was hoping to take the opportunity to excuse myself to go inside with my children. Then the woman finally got to her point.

I will give you the cheese, [she pulls it out] look- it's low fat, and you give me money, not very much, and tomorrow I come and watch you children and you give me money, whatever you can.

Whoa! This was a new level of unscrupulous panhandling that I wasn't used to- so bold!
I quickly mentioned that I have no need for the cheese nor a sitter nor do I have any cash.
She retorted:

But you have checks right? You write checks? I come tomorrow. Are you American?

About as American as that cheese, I suppose, only I hope I taste better.

I insisted she try and sell the cheese to someone else and that I really didn't want it. She insisted on giving me the cheese anyway. I urged her to keep the cheese. I was getting aggravated by now.
Ignoring my wishes, and my tone, she pulled out a new bag and put the cheese in it. She told me to take it and it was OK if I didn't have money. She said she was alone and couldn't eat the cheese by herself.
I said thank you, herded up my girls and turned to go inside.
Her last words were

Good luck with the cheese!

Thanks, I'll need it!
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Cool-down tactics

photo by -sel

We've been practicing and experimenting with different cool-down techniques in this NYC heat wave. Today, we used all of them, as temperatures reached up to 98˚- maybe higher.
Tactic #1 is to be somewhere, anywhere with air conditioning- we stayed at home for half the day. Tactic #2 is to eat something very cold (and preferably delicious)- we had fruit sorbet after lunch and root beer floats after dinner. Tactic #3 is to go to the water- we, even I, played in the water at the nearby park and later, the girls went into the tub with their bathing suits on.

This evening's cool-down, tactic #4, was introduced by Hannah. We were walking down our hill to go home around 7pm at a temp of 94˚, and Hannah started running fast and got far ahead. I called out,
"Hannah, wait for us, please!"
Hannah stopped, turned around and said,
"Mom, I'm just trying to get colder".
With that, she turned down the hill and started running again. Then, Jane started running after her, so we decided to give running as a cool-down a try. To our surprise, we did feel a bit cooler as the slightest of breezes whirred by. Let it be known, however, that this tactic only works before one has exerted the amount of energy to cause a rise in body temperature.

We will be exploring more methods and techniques of cooling down until the days themselves have done so.