Donna Mae Addendum

Photographically, I hardly skimmed the surface of Donna Mae Moose's visit last week, since we were busy doing instead of sitting in front of the computer.Let me see if I can put this back together... On Saturday, we confronted the challenge that comes with moving furniture—when there's nowhere to move it. The task was to replace the age-old oriental carpet in the bedroom with a new rug I bought three or four months ago... that's been rolled up in a corner awaiting assistance.

Now, not being physicists, we tried everything but suspending the bed from the ceiling before realizing that if we just pulled up the mattress and box springs, the 200-pound bed would be a might bit easier to move than trying to scoot it from corner to corner around a 9x12 room. You live, you learn.

We also hung the outrageously huge print that I recently bought (78¾x55") that fit only on one wall in the bedroom. Nailing into a cement wall... hey, another nearly insurmountable challenge. Boy, that thing looked smaller in the store.Dinner was much more precise, as Mae Moose prepared homemade lasagna for us. Mmm mmm, good. Layers and layers of pasta, ricotta cheese, beef and a good 30 pounds or so of mozzarella cheese. Best of all, we cooked enough to last for the next three days, and like most cheese-centric meals, it just got better once it had time to truly set up.

For desert, Ayhan gave Kirbisha a nice bath. As you can see, she thoroughly enjoyed the experience.Painting the living room got off to a slow start, but after scoring primer and then agreeing upon "Twilight Gray" as the chosen new hue, we at last stopped procrastinating and started slapping the roller to the wall... Donna and I discovered in due haste that painting... is not much fun. There's just no particular redemptive glee in the process of priming, engineering corners, taping trim, moving furniture from here to there to here and reloading a roller 500 times. No, painting is work. And, despite the satisfying results, it just plain hurts.

No creative endeavor is truly worth its weight without creating a gargantuan mess. We succeeded.Onward! Monday, Mae Moose and I welcomed the most perfect weather day sitting outside for breakfast at Happy Days Diner in Brooklyn Heights—and were treated to a parade down Montague Street as a bonus, as St. Ann's private school paid tribute to Satan or something of the sort.To Central Park...And the zoo, where no one would come within 10 feet of poor Miss Piggy, thanks to Swine Flu (hey, how's your mamma?)...Here's Mae Mae in her new New York fashion. Take that Lynchburg!

As the painting continued into Tuesday, we at last wrapped the living room, evolving from the sun-kissed gold that it sported for the past seven or eight years (which Strele and Trix Moose were major contributors to, while I believe I created the musical playlist) to the more rich and regal gray. The new coat also gave me the opportunity to paint over some of the many flaws that have come into being over the decade—scary cracks, stupid efforts to remove molding and pulling off the plaster—in all, just a new complexion as I too look toward renewal. A package deal, of sorts.

During her visit, Mae, Ayhan and meese had a fab Turkish dinner up Montague Street at Taze. A must.And finally, Tuesday evening, Donna and I made our way to the building rooftop just in time for dusk, a view that never loses its chroma colors. Here, we look upon the Hudson toward downtown Manhattan...And the vast expanse of Brooklyn...Ah, so that's a wrap. It was another wondrous visit—Mae's third over the past year (and her first trip ever by herself! I'd say she definitely discovered her sense of independence that she may never previously have held complete trust in). An utterly priceless time with my dear friend. So I leave you with a piece of fine art. We call in "Seat On Heat." I could win a Pulitzer for this, don't you think?