Girl Time

David has instituted "boy time" with Primo every few weeks, and in response I have instituted "girl time," the which was enjoyed by myself and my daughter this past Sunday. What do the boys do in their testosterone time?

Take hikes.
Eat burgers.
Read "A Little History of the World."
Buy comic books.
Talk about Andrew Lloyd Weber, Dante, and lofty shit like that.

What do the ladies do in their girl time?

Well, it varies because we are much more fly-by-the-seat-of -our-pants, whimsical people. We're unpredictable, exciting. You can't pin us down. We make it up as we go along. But sometimes we:

Get manis.

And sometimes we

Go to puppet shows.

ALWAYS we eat cupcakes or lemon meringue pies or homemade eclairs.

And ALWAYS we liberally employ the phrase "No boys allowed 'cause its giiiiiiirl time."

This last girl day, we went on a quest to climb a tree. Most kids, I'd guess, have climbed a tree or two by the time they're four year old but Sec has yet to experience that milestone. To climb a tree in New York, you need to make it a real priority, you need to work for it. No one's just going to DROP a good climbing tree onto your front stoop. You won't just amble by a squat, accessible tree as you cross the woods to bring baked goods to your grandma who is sick in bed, the way I imagine kids in the suburbs or country do.

The quest began when a few weeks ago, Sec told me she'd like to climb a tree (OK, it sounded more like, "MOMMY I WANNA CLIMB A TREE RIGHT NOW!") So I put the word out that we were looking for a suitable tree to ascend. Eventually, my granola-ish, outdoorsy Mommy friend told me that she knew of one such a tree, and it could be found in -- no surprise -- Prospect Park. She told me precisely where I could locate it but this was useless information to me, since I am constitutionally unable to navigate myself through the park at all. Every tree looks the same, every path. I am outdoors illiterate. Once I step foot into a wooded area, I lose all sense of direction and am instantly lost. So unless this tree could be found next to a street sign, I was not going to visit it.

But on our girl's day, Sec and I found ourselves at the picnic house to pee and then found ourselves running around the field behind the picnic house pretending to be Cat-people and suddenly we found ourselves, quite by accident, at the climbing tree. Its not an obvious tree, like some of the big weeping willows you can't help by miss - its just a little tree, kind of obscured by some others but it was clear what we were looking at when we stumbled upon it. This tree was created for climbing.

Sec shimmied right up the thing. It was pretty amazing. She thought so too -- for a few minutes. And then she was like, "OK, what next?"

What was next was more Catgirl and Catmommy pretend -- a diverting game where Sec allowed me to lie down but forced me to eat grass. Real grass. It was worth it for the chance to stretch out supine for the better part of an hour but it did occur to me that bystanders might think I had passed out drunk or something, so insensible was I to obvious provocation from the child whose care I was charged with. What can I say? I was EXHAUSTED from all the tree-climbing.Watching the tree-climbing.

Eventually we headed home and read books in bed. A pretty perfect girl's afternoon, if I do say so myself.