Chicken and vegetable kebob, watermelon, and coconut cake

Grilled chicken, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and zucchini were followed by slices of watermelon D. hacked up with the knife she brought with her. Then came paddling around in a kayak looking at the city and the water and the Statue of Liberty, waving to L. and A. on shore, watching D. in her kayaking hat go farther and farther out into the currents–she’s a brave one. I paddled back in to shore to a fat slice of coconut cake–coconut somehow became the primary flavor palate of my 34th year–in my new easy-carry outdoor chair. Because I love L. enough that I’ll admit to things I’m not especially proud of, things like Now that I’m old I don’t want to sit on the ground anymore, I want to sit in a chair when I’m outside. And L. doesn’t simply roll eyes at my bourgeois tendencies and stop calling. L. goes out and gets me a chair. It was hot, the sun out for the first time in days, a gift, the whole good day.

 

Cake, plus ham and cheese sandwich

L. brought the cake in from a bakery on Seventh Avenue, and it had the name of every single library person receiving their degree swirled on top in white icing. J. cut it carefully so that each of those honorees could eat their own name in cake. It was pretty awesome. But I hadn’t eaten lunch yet and my guts went roiling fast around all that buttercream, so I scraped the last shiny bite from the plate with my plastic fork and jumped downstairs for a sandwich, chomped in six seconds by the time I got back to my cloffice.

 

Pizza and sheet cake

I have never seen that many children in one place at one time, except, I guess, when I was a child myself. It was I.’s fourth birthday, and I went along with M. and his parents (J. and M.) to celebrate at the wading pool in the park. I grabbed more than my share and sat down with M. in the shade along with a jumble of other adults and children. I. came over and joined us, sparking an elaborate discussion of everyone’s favorite moment in Cars. I. has pretty amazing storytelling skills, and I was held rapt by his tale (of what happened in Cars). His brother S., just one and a half, ate pizza as it ought to be eaten–squished up into a ball, rolled around in the dirt, and shoved into his mouth with a tiny fat fist. Post-pizza came a cake, which pulled all the kids to the picnic table like metal shavings to a magnet. My brother declared himself the father who could be jumped on, which actually drew some of the children away from their plates of quickly melting sheet cake frosting and onto a pretty adorable dogpile.

 

An apple and a piece of poundcake

I was nearly late meeting C. for our afternoon constitutional, so instead of a proper lunch I grabbed an apple and a piece of organic marble poundcake from the stands at the farmer’s market. I ate the apple while C. poked around looking for a flowering plant that can grow in the shade of his rooftop and the cake while we ambled through the park on our way to the gardens. The garden was packed, the bluebells are out, and we ditched ourselves in the grass of the cherry esplanade and compared systems of self-organization. C. finds to-do lists oppressive while I barely keep it together with five separate notebooks and an index card box. We are very different, C. and I. I would have rather had a savory market treat, but they were all gone, as it was already two in the afternoon.