not to be repeated

Yesterday we had a family day. I know it sounds all domestic and white picket fence-y and sappy, but that’s what it was: a day out, just us, not overly planned, let’s-do-what-we-feel-like kind of day. They happen much more often when the weather is nice. Yesterday the weather was lovely, it was sunny and not very cold (at least not compared to how it’s been) so we decided to do something with the girls.

We went to CMoM, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, which to me was a little boring, but the girls had fun. We had lunch at a place on the UWS called Celeste, where we enjoyed remarkably good pizza and caprese salad, but had to put up with a pretty rude waiter. We walked to the park to take the subway back to Grand Central from 81st, but then the day was still so nice that we decided to walk across the Park and take the metro from Lexington instead.

If you had asked me what my favorite place in the world was two years ago, I would have said Piazza del Duomo in Milan, or maybe the Cala Ginepro beach in Sardinia. No more. At the risk of being disowned by my parents, I’ll confess that my favorite place is now Central Park. My husband used to say “why go into the city to have a picnic? We have parks here too”. One walk through Central Park, and he stopped saying that. And this is a Swiss. Someone used to forests, lakes, and breathtaking scenery. But he had to admit that walking through Central Park is lovely and special. Even in Winter:

Anyway, so after a lovely day we got back home around 6pm and had dinner and so on. And then Stella wouldn’t sleep, so I did what I usually do: turned off the lights, turned on Coldplay, put on the headphones and sat on the sofa with her, watching TV. She listened to Coldplay and cuddled, I watched TV: a movie by M. Night Shamalayan, his latest: The Happening. We saw all of M. Night Shamalayan’s movies, and we were looking forward to watching this one, so we added it to our Netflix queue. The DVD had arrived the day before and my husband had already watched it, but I didn’t even ask him if he liked it. I just assumed it would be a bit spooky but good, like his other movies (most of them, at least).

Boy, was I wrong. The Happening is not spooky, it’s creepy. And it’s not good. It’s incredibly sad and depressing and pointless. It talks about a virus or toxin that starts spreading all of a sudden which pushes people to commit suicide, and it all starts – guess where? Central Park, NYC. That’s right.

So my picture-perfect day and the mood that went with it were ruined by a depressing, creepy, bad movie. I tell ya, if I meet M. Nigh Shamalayan I will drop-kick him.

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