i heart NY (10 of 10)-part A

the last* 10 on my list of 100 that i'll miss about the city-i've had this written forever, but i needed to find the pics to go with it. here goes...

10. wash and fold. imagine never having to wash or fold another piece of laundry. i went months without entering the laundry room in our basement. the dry cleaners was 2 doors down. I called them in the morning before 10am, they came within 2 minutes, carried away 2 huge bags of dirty clothes, and brought it back by four, washed and folded. really, it was like magic.
9. proximity. i have brought this up a lot in this series, but i really can't quite explain the wonders of this. because manhattan is only 13 miles long (9 of which we frequented) and 2 miles wide, everything is literally at your fingertips. within 3 blocks of our apt was the natural history museum, children's museum, central park, my gym, pinkberry, post office, shipping place, 2 grocery stores, about 20 restaurants/take-out places, the grade school park would've gone to, and about 20 boutiques/stores. everything else is a short scooter/subway ride away. craig and i were late for a concert at Carnegie hall one night and we hopped on the scoots and got there in 5 minutes. i felt like we lived in the suburbs of manhattan, but could be downtown witnin minutes.
8. jemimah and jane. oh, i love those ladies. we becaem friends with jemimah while i was pregnant with parker. and i met jane through YW's. Jemimah started babysitting for us when parker was 2 weeks old and either her or her daughter jane, babysat for us at least 2 nights a week for the next 3 years. they gave me freedom to keep living life in the city even with kids. i will miss all the babysitting and having jemimah sew for more, but mostly i'll miss jemimah's hugs and jane's smile and the love they have for my boys.

                                                            jane, jemimah and michelle
7. sunday nights in central park with the gang. a few years ago we all started meeting every sunday afternoon at the southern tip of the great lawn, spring through fall, whoever was in town and their visitors, if any. we layed on blankets chased parker, then the next summer chased miles, and the guys played hours of sick, dying, dead, until the sun went down.

                                                      

6.www.freshdirect.com - if you have used it, you get it. if not, i can't even explain the wonders.
5. summer nights out on the town on the scooter with craig and friends. there is nothing better. cruising down 9th ave. on the back of the scooter on a summer evening, with my arms around craig, en route to meet our friends, would find me with a smile of contentment on my face.

4. concerts. not that they don't have concerts anywhere besides NY, but we will never attend half as many concerts now that we don't live there. i think we attended around 50 concerts in the 4 years we lived there. because of craig's old job (assistant music producer) we got free tickets all the time and because he loves music and i love going out, concerts were perfect for us. my all time favorite concert experience was the Billy Joel concert (s)(those are links to 4 different blogs about the awesomeness that was that night. a few of the reasons that the concert will go down as one of my favorite experiences of my life include: all of our best friends were there with us, we were all working as PA's to a film director and had walkie talkies with ear pieces and ALL ACCESS passes and I talked to Paul McCartney. if you see any pics of me on those blogs, keep in mind that i was 9 months pregnant-i delivered miles 2 days later).
there were a lot of other great concerts...andrew bird, faith hill and tim, al green, imogen heap, the teddy bears, neil diamond-2x, and in the video craig took, the avett brothers.

avett bros live from uh huh yup on Vimeo.
3. running in central park-whether by myself, with the boys, with friends, for fun or in a race, i loved running in that park. if i had the boys, we would stop at one (or 5) of the 22 playgrounds throughout the park. if i was by myself, i would head straight to the reservoir cause I couldn't take the stroller on the path. i ran miles and miles in that park and i still have not covered every trail. the roads were perfectly paved for the stroller, without sidewalks to have to go up and down on, plus no cars or stop lights. if you are ever in NY, take a run there for me.

2. central park. ok, maybe i've already talked about central park more than a dozen times in my top 100, but it still needs one last shout out. there is just something magical about that place. maybe it's the fact that it is in the middle of such a crazy city and when you are in the middle of the park, you can't hear the traffic and forget the city exists. maybe i loved that it was steps away from our apt and i thought it was our backyard. the achitecture and layout of the park are so extrodiary, i never ceased to be in awe of the place. it will always be one of the great loves of my life.

*you are going to have to stay tuned for the #1 thing i miss about NY. this post was already way too long.