God, isn’t it GREAT to be away without the kids

Hello to all my new subscribers who have come to me via the RTE culture pages. Welcome! I hope you like the place. And if you don’t, I’m sorry but… all the emails are pretty much like this one.

And a special shout out to my amazing friends who said such lovely things when that piece was posted and also do mostly every week. I’m sooo grateful to have such supportive friends who have always been the biggest cheerleaders of my writing. Thank youuuuu

A week in the life in New York:

Tuesday:

At Forest School, we spotted a raccoon carrying its baby in its mouth!

One of the kids overheard me say to another parent how awful the wet weekend was and said “WHAT? What bit did you not like? The bowling?? The cinema?? The silent disco???” I told her of course, no, I loved all of those things and all I meant was, well, it was a bit cold, standing at the edge of the pool...in the rain. Can I show you a photo of the breakfast served up the last day I forgot to show you:

We paid actual money for this food; it wasn’t free food served in prison. Not pictured is the middle of the pancake, which somehow, was raw.

Tuesday evening, I met my brother for an early dinner in The Yards (PSA: They have a spice bag on the menu).

Heading down 9th Avenue at 6pm - what a treat! 6pm in New York has a special energy. Everyone is coming out of work and the evening has so much potential……unless you have kids. If you have kids, there’s no hour of the day you are almost certainly going to be at home than the hour of 6 to 7. Which is why I love being out in it so much - it’s rare! (There’s really so many lives you can live in New York. The choose-your-own-adventure story I’m on right now is the ‘Central Park and Museum of Natural History between the hours of 10am and 5pm’ route. There’s worse adventures, certainly, but there’s also…better. Well, different. Sometimes I get to flick around and catch a glimpse of the other routes but they’re not my path right now.)

We were catching an early dinner because we’re off to see Proof, starring Irishwoman Ayo Edebiri. It was excellent.

Wednesday:

The end-of-year ceremonies are starting to fill up the calendar and today we went to see our First Grader perform in her school play. Say what you want about putting your kids on the internet but the two children of the professional TikTokers knew how to deliver a LINE! They possessed a highly practised charisma which really POPPED beside the indecipherable monotone favoured by the rest of the cast. They made the whole thing almost bearable and for that, I am grateful.

Dave and I headed out for a Lower East Side dinner to Hags. I’ve wanted to go since I read this post by . It’s a set menu with vegan or omnivore options. I went vegan and Dave went omni. It’s an intimate setting (i.e. small), very cute, gorgeous staff, fabulous food. Tips are included because vegans are good people.

Thursday:

I met the lovely for coffee in the Church of Sweden on 48th Street. I can’t stop thinking about the princess cake I saw there but never ordered. I must go back.

Friday:

I met Dave for lunch in the Modern. At the same time, the six year old was on her field trip to the Whitney. We are just such a Modern Art-appreciating family.

After school, the 5 year old had her very first playdate with her very best friend and she was unbelievably excited. She proved to be a natural host and when I said on the way home from school that I was going to get strawberries and biscuits for the playdate, she asked if I could please get pineapple and mango because her best friend “is from Thailand and she likes them”.

The playdate was a roaring success, thank God, and I got a reliable rec for the best Thai restaurant in New York: Thai Money in Woodside in Queens. Order the green curry, grilled pork and papaya salad, so I’m told.

Saturday:

We had an easy day. The 6 year old said she was tired and I said I was tired too, I wonder why. She said matter of factly “Well, it’s the weekend. We’re tired from doing our jobs all week and we’re meant to rest”. How is she SO WISE. I got the house in order. Did errands with the kids. Donated clothes. Bought chocolate strawberries at a pop-up market. They were 16 dollars per cup so I told them they could share one, then said “FINE! One each” because I couldn’t stand the immediate whining and decided I’d happily pay sixteen dollars for it to stop. This is called permissive parenting aka bad parenting.

The 6 year old keeps casually mentioning the Whitney and it’s cracking me up.

Sunday:

David’s twin brother was in town last night for one night only and we all go for a diner breakfast in Old John’s before he heads on.

The babysitter arrives at midday because Dave and I are off on an overnight getaway and we drive upstate to Kenoza Hall. On the way there, we kept saying to each other “Isn’t it great to be without the kids?” Like, saying it manically to each other over and over before we’d even left the city.

I always remember a conversation I had with someone nearly 20 years ago. I had just finished college and it was with a solicitor in my town. She said she was on a ski holiday with a group of solicitors that included one solicitor from the firm I was going to and she said that this solicitor kept saying “Isn’t it great not to be working? Isn’t it so great not to be at work”. “She KEPT saying it”, this woman told me. “Like, OK, chill…are they always at work or something?” Years later, I was still working in Dublin and was involved in a case opposite this hometown firm. My boss one evening picked up the phone to call the opposing solicitor and when they didn’t answer, he looked at the clock, then looked at me and said: “Five thirty-five...your man’s probably gone home to his massive pile outside Trim, has he?”.

“As it happens” I began tentatively, “I do know that man has a pool in his house and yes, he’s probably in it right now hahahaha”.

Like the tightly wound Dublin solicitor on the slopes, we never really got over our new found freedom. We checked in and parked up on a pair of Adirondacks on the lawn and I looked up from my book at regular intervals to say “God, isn’t it GREAT to be away without the kids?”

It was a beautiful, relaxing guesthouse and the only thing that slightly unnerved me was that we seemed to be the only people staying? But then I spotted a man reading on a lounger by the pool and that gave me comfort.

After dinner, we made s’mores at the fire pit outside.

Monday:

Woke at 8am. Eight! Had a bath with Lena Dunham (Famesick) till 9 then went down for breakfast where the guy by the pool was standing, dressed in black and asked us what we’d like to order. The man from the pool works here. We were the only guests on the property. Back to feeling like this is the very slow start of a very boring horror movie….

(I realise I said I’m in the dull Central Park adventure version of New York and then went on to list two fine dining restaurants, a weekend getaway, a cafe, a diner and a Broadway play. It’s because we are in our last weeks of living in New York and this is what we are choosing to do when what we really should be doing is packing.)