Ted, Ted, Ted

We got a much earlier start this morning — left the house a little after 9:30 to meet my aunt Anna and cousins Maija and Max. Anna and Max were dropping Maija at the bus station to go back to Boston. We met them on 54th St. (near the Red Parrot, the first salsa club I haunted when I came to New York in 87; scene of my first weapons frisk, at an immortal double bill with El Gran Combo and Oscar de Leon) and walked together down to Port Authority, stopping at a coffee shop to warm up on the way. Lilly looked a little dazed, as if she could’t believe it really was this cold. Laura and Mary took it OK, though. I had expected it to be a lot colder, so it didn’t seem that bad to me. It couldn’t have been under 30.After a lunch of bad pizza in the bowels of the Port Authority (I told Laura this is how the colorful locals eat, which is true), we took the crosstown train to the Central Park Zoo. It was a perfect day for winter animals, and the polar bears, penguins and sea lions were duly putting on shows. Laura, bone-tired, had her second real meltdown of the trip as we were leaving, so we came back to Mary and Diogenes’ place in a taxi and took a rest. Then Laura and Lilly and I took the train to Ethan and Mary’s place in Park Slope. (Mary, our Mary, was feeling fluish, so she stayed home with Mary and Diogenes and a hot water bottle.) Laura found that she shared both a Harry Potter obsession and a certain taste for the scatological with E & M’s twins Adam and Charlie, so they had a fine time. Lilly found the vast array of plastic toys irresistible. If you ever get to be a kid again, make sure you get a dad who is crazy about comics and action figures.