New York, Ohio, Connecticut....

The joys of travelling somethimes escape me.  I arrived in New York last Friday.  Stayed overnight with my wonderful friends in their spectacular Central Park West apartment and then early the next day had time for a 'regular' coffee and a toasted corn muffin and then flew to Cincinatti for my nephew's wedding. After two days I flew out to Hartford Connecticut and finally landed at my brother's house last night. 

So let me back track a bit.  Cincinatti, Ohio - the mid west of America and as one of the waiters in a restaurant put it, "when the world ends I want to be in Cincinatti, since everything here happens 10 years later!"  Now this was an interesting glimpse of an America I have never seen,  The people were unfailingly friendly and polite and huge.  I mean really big - the biggest I have so far seen in the States.

There was a huge street food festival and it started just outside our hotel.  When we first arrived we turned up our sophisticated New York/London/San Francisco noses at the abundance of fried food on sale.  By the end of the weekend we had all succumbed to the seductive American appeal of the smell of deep-frying and were tucking into crispy fried pickles, fried sauerkraut balls, sweet potato fries, crab cakes and funnel cake (don't even ask!).  We resisted the various foods 'on a stick', including chocolate covered raspberry cheesecake on a stick.  What is it with Americans and food on sticks?  We saw giant baklava on a stick, chicken nuggets on sticks, deep-fried apple pie on sticks - these people do not know how to use cutlery!

Anyway, to get back to the reason we were in Ohio - my nephew's wedding.  Wonderful, family-filled, very Jewish and totally joyous.  It was great to see my cousins, my brother and sistr-in-law were really happy and the newly married couple were having a blast.  My outfit looked fine, my kids looked elegant and all in all it was great to be there.  Photos will follow when I get back to London.

Now I'm about to shower and go see my dad in his nursing home.  I am not in such great shape emotionally and I am so bored with the state of myself that I don't even want to write about it.  I am clear that I cannot stand to be with me in this miserable state for one more day and yet, I don't have any clear answers as to where to go with this.  Meditation, therapy, medication or just hibernation?  Tried them all, but maybe it's time to go into any one of these past solutions much more deeply.  Certainly pretending that everything is ok, whilst putting on a very happy face, only goes so far and then doesn't work anymore.  If I am this fed up, what must it be like for those around me?

I still enjoy things, the wedding was fun, my kids were fantastic and yet, it all feels a bit like the new razzmatazz security x-ray scanners at the airport.  It only penetrates a tiny bit below the surface.

Enough for today. Everything changes eventually.