On the Way Back to LA

Playa del Rey, California

2 May 2013

Try this next time you have a flight pending:

Go to a great restaurant and order yourself a great meal.  Eat it.  In the ideal restaurant, the meal is enormous.  It is meant to fill you up with raw pleasure MORE than once.

The steak from Smith and Wollenski’s in Philadelphia made my flight home heavenly, ease.  Yeah.  Yes the porterhouse steak for two,  was that good.  The service, Fabian, was perfect: professional, earnest, and prompt.  This location, over looking Rittenhouse Square is date worthy.

The cherry blossoms in ripe fullness of SPRING! The image of joy on my husband’s face as he sipped his glass of a bold deep red with hints of pepper and chocolate.  YUM!

Or was it the memories of happy shopping in Philadelphia that make so happy on the flight home, back to LA?

In just 24 hours, I accomplished SO MUCH!

Thank you, Macy’s in downtown Philadelphia for the tremendous service.  Specifically, Nicklaus was amazing.  He was the paradigm of sales virtue helping me earnestly to collect the objects that will buffer my soul and comfort my body.  His friendly, focused service made it possible for me to achieve the (almost) impossible mission I’d set before myself: create a wonderful HOME, a retreat, a secret sanctuary for my loving husband, for myself, and the kids.

HOME: a place to return to.  It is the place where you base yourself.  It is from where you grow and expanding reaching out to the dazzling universe with ever changing interests and goals.  It is where your books are waiting for you to read them.  It is where your clothing hangs.    It is your nest, your hide-out.  It is where you charge your batteries.  It is where you hang out in your underware and eat cereal in bed.  Home is more than an address, a roof, a fridge, and a shower stall.  Home is one’s own private paradise, a Utopian kingdom, a perfect cubby for the brain and body.  At BEST, home is sacred territory and must be treated as such.

I stormed through the store and purchased all the required elements for a domestic paradise.  Breifly I was stranded, not trusting the rude boys that showed up to help me based upon my (BAD) Craigslist search for HELP transporting all my new treasures “back to the ranch.” Thanks to Über, a marvelous on-line, app-based service, I was able to use my iPhone and call for a car, an SUV truck, in disco black and equipped with party lights and booze (I did not indulge, this time) precisely when I needed one.  WHAT A WONDROUS AGE we live in!

Exactly then LIKE a bling BLING BLACK man-knight-giant: Emmanuel C. came to my rescue.  He is a hyper street smart, super ghetto fabulous, savvy, entrepreneur and business-man TAXI driver.  He had, “no problem,” helping me to get my many new housewares back to the NEW HOME, a little rental somewhere in Philadelphia.  He also recommended the precisely right furniture store.

AGAIN, I blitzed in and got the goods.  Tamara, the saleswoman there really went out of her way to help me get the most comfortable and lovely home furnishings IMMEDIATELY.  Would you believe that we arranged for delivery THAT VERY SAME NIGHT???

Yes, it is true.  We did.  Thus, after eleven pm the movers arrived and they delivered and installed everything before midnight.  I was just about to turn into a pumpkin when WHAM!  They were GONE!  Presto.  I had a room full of new furnishings.  Amazing.

This morning, after a few important meetings, I went back to Macy’s where I dropped more cash on ideal home-wares, getting the final needed nothings, the little tools of the kitchen, porcelains, high thread count cotton sheets, and other everyday marvels that will make our world a cozy place.  Based on the series of successful visits, starting with the first one, in the shoe department… on another visit to marvelous Philadelphia… (I’d popped into the crowded shoe department and the saleswoman was so patient and understanding of my skinny feet.  She got me pair after pair of shoes until we found a pair I love.  She persisted.  She endured, like Nicklaus.  He also gave of himself.  Thus making my frenzied shopping extravaganza a productive and worth mentioning experience.

The sum of my growing experience of life in Philadelphia is that it is a city one can proudly call, “HOME!”

By the way, IF I’d have another day in Philadelphia there is no way I’d miss the OUTSIDER ART Exhibit.

And YOU know how much I crave dancing with the BRIDE.

(I’d LOVE to get nude and MOVE it around Duchamp’s cracked masterpiece…

Butt, that is another story… Hah!)

Love,

Frau