A FORTUITOUS TALE OF MOSTLY NONSENSE

do you ever wonder if things in your life are fortuitous? 

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you know, so this won't eat the whole page. ;)

on friday we were super bored. restless. huck was asleep in his stroller, the weather seemed deceptively warm at first but quickly became bone-piercing cold, a nice walk to nowhere was quite out of the question. there wasn't anywhere uptown i felt like being, and going downtown seemed like way too much work, and . . . you know days like that?

i set my sights on the met, as one does. the met is a great place to while away a nap hour, and a part of living in this city that spoils a person rotten, the ability to just drop in on your favorite masterpieces a few times a month, as you wish, when you can. you start to develop a relationship with these oil paintings and the masters behind them, it's quite romantic really. 

but on friday my heart just wasn't in it. (and the met volunteers have been on quite the severe anti-soda streak lately, really it's rather draconian. :)

i was in the sixties on the west side and went on into the park anyway, just in case the met started sounding better the closer to it i got. now, central park when it is crummy out is like a dead zone. it is just you, the occasional clomping of a horse-drawn carriage off in the distance, and s i l e n c e. for a city so noisy, the hush in there is disconcerting. 

the other thing about the park is there's no direct shot across it no matter how hard you try. you always end up a little too north, a little too south, it's sort of ridiculous. obviously i took a wrong walking path in there and ended up at the bottom east corner of the park instead of the middle east corner like i intended, such is my life in the park. but the outdoor strand books stand is at that bottom corner and i  love that outdoor strand stand because it reminds me of paris.

it was kind of painfully cold, but i went through each stack in the half-off bin slowly, leaning one book back after another to see the next in the row, switching hands in and out of coat pockets when the cold got to be too much, reading author reviews on the backs when one piqued my interest, rocking the stroller every so often to help my huck to stay asleep. i was happy with the direction my afternoon was taking. just me and some books. (and some obnoxious tourist in a cab at the light who shouted out the window at me, "ANY GOOD BOOKS IN THERE? DO YOU LO-OO-OVE NEW YORK CITY?) i was starting to get a good pile going of used books i was considering adopting when i happened upon a copy of malcolm gladwell's the tipping point. 

i picked it up and leafed through it a bit when, on a page about the tipping point of the popularity of the cartoon "blues clues," a business card for blue ribbon sushi flipped out. blue ribbon sushi. on a page about blues clues. on a rather blue, dreary day.

it was like i had found a little (blues) clue of my own and suddenly the entirety of fifth avenue was sparkling with possibility. suddenly i had in my hands not just a pre-owned copy of a somewhat nerdy book that i might have liked to read on an ordinary day--complete with highlighted passages (i do love when used books have highlighted passages)--but also a horribly romantic, potential mystery to be solved!

i bought the book immediately. and when i got home and huck was sufficiently fed and happily grooving with some littlest pet shop doohickeys (those things . . .) i tapped out "blue ribbon sushi" into my google machine. 

blue ribbon sushi, according to google, has a price rating of four dollar signs ($$$$ = !!!!) and is located on sullivan street in soho . . . and okay. maybe this isn't leading anywhere . . . 

but then an ad popped up for . . . jet blue airlines. what?

this was getting nutty. it obviously meant something. what could it mean!? i googled "blue in soho," because, what else could be blue in soho? i was thinking maybe the street signs were blue in soho but they aren't, the street signs are green. clearly something else was blue in soho and then this would all make sense! did i need to buy a blue maxi skirt in soho? (probably?) the first result that came up was for blue soho recordings, but their website is under construction.

and then i sort of forgot about it till later that evening when brandon got home from work and i told brandon about our myriad of almost-discoveries. he sort of nodded, though i don't think he quite grasped the spiritual quest-ness of it all, and then i got the strangest hankering for some old-school steve in a striped polo shirt. as one does.

the episode of blue's clues we caught on netflix was the one where blue's clues add up to solve the mystery of what blue wants to pretend to be (an astronaut! blasting off (on a blue jet?) into space!)

clearly the universe is trying to tell me something. i'm not sure quite what. maybe it's time for an expensive sushi date? because huck didn't really "get" blues clues. 

though if nothing else, it was nice in a somewhat alarming way to discover that i do still know all of the words to the "mail" song.

maaaiiil!

(i'm halfway through the tipping point and have to report that it's only, so far, "eh.")