The End of the Cleaning Lady

Last Friday night, I anticipated coming home to a nice clean apartment. It was my birthday month (I’ve gone from celebrating my actual date of birth to my birthday weekend to my birthday week and now my birthday season), and in a fit of self-indulgence I had called the cleaning lady. I thought the extravagance was justified because I had a cold and was expecting guests. That morning, I had scurried around, cleaning for the cleaning lady: I folded clothes, squared away shoes, weeded the dead roses out of my magnificent birthday bouquet. I cleaned the cat box and washed the breakfast dishes. I stopped short of folding the bath towels, tossing them onto a bathroom shelf and, perversely, leaving one in a heap on a bureau in the hall. I left the bathroom sink smudged (the super had fixed the cold-water tap the day before) and did not bother to sweep up the rose petals on the kitchen floor. The cleaning lady had to have something to do.

I am no good at having a cleaning lady. For a while it was all right: she came every other week, I left her eighty dollars, and when I got home after work the eighty dollars was gone and everything looked neat and burnished. But then I’d reach for the paring knife, or fumble for the bathtub plug, or grope for the lion notepad next to my desk, and nothing would be where it was supposed to be. The cleaning lady had her own ideas of where things should go. She'd toss flowers that I was not yet ready to part with. She recycled newspapers I was keeping for a friend who burns the Times in her wood stove. She threw away the extra bottle of diluted dishwashing detergent that I keep for washing my eyeglasses. Grrrr ... Whenever something went missing, I blamed the cleaning lady.

Then, she replicated herself: she started turning up with her sister-in-law. Now I had two Peruvian cleaning ladies, so I felt I had to pay them both—not twice as much (I’m not that gullible) but something extra every time. It was impossible to negotiate either the amount or the doppelganger, because of the language barrier. (Her English is highly selective.) My strategy was to get out of the house before the cleaning lady (or ladies) arrived, so that I could in good conscience leave money for only one.

So I open the door when I get home and . . . That’s odd: the rumpled towel is still on the bureau in the hallway. Well, maybe the cleaning lady thought I wanted it there. Also the newspapers are still piled in front of the closet door. But that's O.K., because my friend with the wood stove is visiting from Massachusetts. Then I turn on the light in the living room and see the money on the table and I know for sure: the cleaning lady didn't come. So I scour the bathroom sink and sweep the kitchen floor—it doesn't take very long—alternately counting my blessings (I still have my diluted dish detergent) and cursing the cleaning lady (there's a penny stuck to the kitchen counter that I was counting on her to pry off). The place looks fine, at least by lamplight. The cleaning lady has trained me to do most of the work myself.

My friend from New Hampshire arrived a few hours later and parked in front of my building. We would have to get up at 7:30 in the morning to move the car, which did not sound like a fun way to start a Saturday, so we made a midnight foray to see if we could do better. At the end of the block are two spots in a school zone (the sign says No Parking 7 AM to 4 PM School Days), and the spot nearer the crosswalk was vacant. The doorman came out to congratulate us and make sure we knew that we were good till Monday. We were way ahead of him: Monday was Presidents Day, and school was out, so we were actually good till Tuesday. High five!

I called the cleaning lady on Saturday, to make sure she was O.K. She was fine—she just thought I’d wanted her to come the next Friday, which was now “this” Friday. It was hopeless to say that I had expected her yesterday; I could hear her thinking, How can I come yesterday if it is already today? She persisted in saying she would come "this Friday." I repeated that I would not need her this Friday, because I would have time over the weekend to clean the place myself. She was very sorry.

My friend from Massachusetts arrived on Sunday and found a spot in front of my building that would be good until eight on Monday (for MuniMeters, Presidents Day was just another Monday). The idea was that when New Hampshire left, Massachusetts could pull into her spot. But New Hampshire was not to be pressured (Live Free or Die!). This potential source of tension between the states evaporated when we went out on Sunday afternoon and saw that the car behind New Hampshire was gone, and Massachusetts could move into the school zone. Double high five! The two best parking spots on the block, and we had them. Plus a hundred dollars that I didn’t have to pay the cleaning lady.


I couldn't get a good picture of my friends' cars in their holiday parking spots, so here is a picture of me as Mr. Dick (from "David Copperfield") on Charles Dickens' (and my) birthday. I can't imagine why it never occurred to me before to go to a party in drag.

In Den Haag

The venue for Baby Dee’s show on December 17th in den Haag (which in English we call The Hague, and is much easier to pronounce than the Dutch) was Paard van Troje (Trojan Horse), site of the State X–New Forms Festival. I have been trying all this time to figure out why it is called Paard van Troje . . . The entrance is deceptive: you go up a flight of stairs to what looks like a grand old town house on Prinsengracht, a wide street with a trolley running along it, knock on the door, and nobody answers. (I was early.) I entered through the stage door, around the corner, and was led down a hall and through a door and along a ramp behind a screen, on the other side of which was … Baby Dee!

Dee and the band were in the midst of their sound check. For this gig, Dee had reassembled some of the musicians who played with her at the Holland Festival, two years ago: the drummer Alex Neilsen, from Glasgow, and the bassist Joe Carvell, from Coventry, as well as the cellist Matthew Robinson, who had come from Brooklyn earlier that week and rehearsed with Dee in Rotterdam. (Dee will do a show in Rotterdam on January 24th, which will include an exhibit of work by Christina de Vos, who did the wonderful snail paintings for “Regifted Light.”) The performance space at the Trojan Horse was decorated with white tuffets that looked like big marshmallows and smaller black tuffets that looked like licorice Dots. There were also black and white dots on the floor. Dee lamented that she had not worn her Dalmatian pants. There was a piano at stage right and the harp at stage left. Dee’s inestimably valuable friend and producer Richard Guy, of Tin Angel, had driven all the way from Coventry with the harp and the bass.

Dee was not playing till 11 P.M. I had thought we would explore den Haag and have dinner somewhere before the show (den Haag was cute; I especially liked the garden houses that I saw from the train on the way there, and the outdoor cafés featuring tiny braziers in glass cases), but the festival organizers had other ideas, and the musicians and their friends were escorted across the street to an upper room, where caterers had set up a buffet. Afterward, we kept Dee company in her dressing room upstairs at the Paard van Troje: Christina, her friends Hans and Marleen (who maintains Dee’s Web site), Matthew, Rich, and me. Dee was sharing the dressing room with Jóhann Jóhannsson, whose group the Apparat Organ Quartet, from Iceland, plays all sorts of organs, really LOUD. Dee did her makeup at a mirror surrounded by light bulbs. She drew on eyebrows. She put on blush from a kit with a tiny brush. She sprayed stuff in her hair, brushed it upside down, teased it a little, and, still upside down, drew it up with a comb on either side: when she stood, her hair looked like the fabulous red plumage of some mythological bird.

“I’m going to struggle into my outfit,” Dee said. Baby Dee has lately been taken up by the fashion world—before leaving Europe, she would be playing at a party for Fiorucci, in Milan—and her outfit consisted of layers and layers of dyed tutus and a pair of velvety black high heels. “Rotterdam,” she said, showing them off. She also had a new hot-pink fake-fur hooded jacket, made for her by Christina’s mom, Anneliese de Vos, a.k.a. Mrs. Foxy. It literally stops traffic—at least bicycle traffic (remember, we were in Holland).

“Do you have a set list?” I asked.

“A set list!” Dee said. I tore a few sheets out of a notebook and gave her a pencil, and she consulted with Rich about what to play. She would start with the accordion, then go to the piano and do “Brother Slug and Sister Snail,” finishing with "The Pie Song," before moving to the harp to do a set-within-the-set with Matthew on the cello, and then go back to the piano. She included several songs from “Safe Inside the Day,” because “people like them,” she said. She decided against some longer ones from “A Book of Songs for Anne Marie,” because the set could last only an hour. She was going to end with “The Earlie King,” and I had to bite my tongue, because that’s a scary song, and I have a weakness for the silly, stupid songs, but nobody asked me, and "The Earlie King" is a great song, certainly one of the best on the new live CD, “Baby Dee Goes Down to Amsterdam,” which was for sale in the lobby. (It sold out.)

Showtime! More friends of Christina’s had arrived, and my friend Ella, from Amsterdam, came with her niece, and we all perched on tuffets. Dee entered in her tutu and heels, and played a beautiful show. The set list had evolved until the last minute. I realized that Dee’s choice of instruments (bass, cello, drums) brings out the darkness in her music, though the drummer, Alex, has a wonderful feathery touch. The audience grew as she played; we had to move our tuffets to make room behind us. The sound system was great—very sensitive—and so was the lighting, from big aluminum cones, like outsized reading lamps. Dee played an encore, ending with “Teeth Are the Only Bones That Show,” and made her exit in her stocking feet, then came back to reclaim her shoes. (She had to take them off to work the pedals on the harp.) By the finish, her hair had shaken loose and she looked gorgeous.

When it was over, we partied until the wee hours, first in the Trojan Horse and then in the hotel, and the next day we all went down to Amsterdam.

Thanks to Marcel Musters (above, with Dee and me) for letting us stay in his place, and for the video shown here (shot in New York on Christmas Day). Here are some pictures taken by the official photographer for the festival (note Nos. 20-25).



Happy New Year! And Happy Birthday to Dee!

In Dutch

Somehow it had escaped my notice that the festivities surrounding the celebration of the hundredth birthday of the artist known as Ele D’Artagnan at Post I Perdu, a theatre belonging to a poetry foundation (adjoining a bookshop dedicated to poetry in many languages) in the university neighborhood of Amsterdam, would be in Dutch. Three large works by D’Artagnan floated against black velvet drapes while Ella Arps, owner of the gallery Arps & Co., which handles his work in the Netherlands, led the audience through his incredibly colorful life “on the margins of La Dolce Vita.” Ella has absorbed the biographical details as well as anyone: how the child born an orphan in Venice and given the name Michele Stinelli rented a room in the home of Pietro Gallina, in the ancient Forum of Rome; acted in films by Fellini; painted; pursued the question of his parentage (mother, of the Lombardi family, a harpist with La Scala; father unknown but believed by D’Artagnan to be Toscanini); died homeless in Rome; and, through the efforts of Pietro, his lifelong friend, came to be represented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and to underwrite a school in Savador de Bahia. Although the artist has yet to be recognized in Italy, celebrations of his centenary went forward on three continents: in Amsterdam and Limburg, Germany; in New York and Chicago; and in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.

In Amsterdam, two poets read, in Dutch, which sounded easier to understand in verse than in conversation. One of them was a young man with a bottle of beer who accepted as a stipend a photograph of D’Artagnan reproduced on metal. It was lovely to see people crowding to get up close to the paintings, which are full of charming, minuscule details. Ella introduced me as a collector. Just for the record, I am not a collector, though I am the proud of owner of a drawing that D’Artagnan did on a matchpack.

My stay in the Netherlands began at dawn yesterday (I am not sure of the exact time of sunrise in Amsterdam so near the winter solstice, but it was raining when I arrived and stayed dark until about ten in the morning) and continues tonight in The Hague at a concert by Baby Dee to celebrate her CD, “Baby Goes Down to Amsterdam,” a live recording of a concert that took place during the Holland Festival in June, 2009. I think you could say that D’Artagnan and Baby Dee are both outsider artists, in that they are more celebrated outside their own lands.

Parallel Park

It took me a full half hour this morning to get into position to park: a twenty-minute walk to the car (in a distant 11:30-1 spot) and an agonizing ten-minute drive to a nearby 8:30-10 block. By 8:50 A.M., I was double-parked and waiting for the broom. It came at about nine, later than usual, and by 9:02 I was happily situated in front of a building whose doorman kept popping out to sweep up ginkgo leaves. A generous spot in front of me was claimed by a silver Lexus at 9:09.

For a while last week, I was a two-car family. A friend came down from New Hampshire late on Thursday, and we were up at eight on Friday to find her a spot. I didn’t want to worry her, but I was not that optimistic. Friday was Veterans Day, and alternate-side parking was suspended: it is never easy to find a spot under those circumstances, because no one moves. Then again it was a Friday, when people sometimes leave town early for the weekend. Still, Veterans Day meant a Veterans Day Parade, and veterans driving into the city to march in it.

My friend was at the wheel, crawling along, looking for a spot on blocks where I know there is no legal parking, and I kept waggling my fingers at the road ahead and saying, “Zip along.” We drove east, we drove north, we drove west. “Stop!” I said. “I thought I saw a spot. Back up.”

“I don’t like backing up,” she said, and she inched backward reluctantly to the spot I had seen, in front of a fire hydrant I had not seen. Oops. Zip along.

We drove west, we drove south, we drove east again, and I saw a possible spot near a fire hydrant and directed her into it. I swung open the passenger door, intending to hop out and see if we were too close (we were), and a car that was squeezing past us had to swerve to avoid getting doored. I apologized left and right, literally: to the driver on my right and to the friend on my left, who had had visions of a delightful weekend spent shopping for a used car door. I never don’t look when I open the car door. There must have been something about driving around with my friend that made the streets feel like my own driveway.

Yesterday, the Times ran an Op-Ed piece about how the alternate-side parking calendar fosters tolerance ( “Alternate Side Parking Brings Peace”): it “is actually a model for managing the challenges of diversity.” It is true that car-owning infidels are fine with Islam if it means we don’t have to move our cars on Idul-Adha. Occidental parkers love Asian New Year, and parkers of all persuasions celebrate the Jewish holidays. Perhaps Jewish car owners feel more kindly toward the Blessed Virgin Mary when alternate side is suspended for the Immaculate Conception (coming up, on December 8th). Many religious holidays—Passover and Easter, for instance—are determined by the sun and the moon. Parking (or, rather, not having to move your car on these precious days) makes you feel you’re part of something bigger than you are—a part of history, a child of the universe.

But as a religion in itself, Alternate-Side Parking has a major disadvantage: it doesn’t offer much in the way of an afterlife. About the best you could hope for is to be reincarnated as someone who can afford a garage.

We drove south, we drove west, we drove east, executing a U-turn as necessary.

The author of the Op-Ed piece, Alan Draper, is identified as “a political scientist at St. Lawrence University.” His idea is that the European Union, some citizens of which have exhibited xenophobia, could use a little of the spirit that animates alternate-side parking. In fact, on Veterans Day my friend and I were thinking about Europe. Our fathers were both veterans of the Second World War. My father was in the Infantry, and was part of the Normandy Invasion. Besides England and France, he did a tour of duty in Alaska, and after he got home he never wanted to go anyplace again. Her father was in the Air Force, a bomber pilot who got shot down over enemy territory and sent to a German P.O.W. camp. He traded the cigarettes in his care packages for chocolate and sugar to scrape together the ingredients to make fudge. After the war, he was famous for his prisoner-of-war fudge.

Finally, at the far end of the block, between a car and a crosswalk, there was a space for us, in the last spot before the river. I realized later that we two daughters of veterans of foreign wars were parked in the same spot, two blocks apart. Talk about parallel parking.

Bicyculture

If the weather report featured a beauty index, last Sunday would have set a record. It was dazzlingly clear, sunny but not hot, with no humidity and barely a breath of wind. It was the day of the New York Marathon, in which I was not running, though I always get the urge, during the marathon season, to buy sporting goods. This year it was bike accessories: a copper bell (ding-ding!) and two lights (it’s the law), on rubbery straps, which can be removed to foil thieves.

So on Sunday I was riding my bike on the boardwalk, having given up an excellent parking spot to spend the day at the beach, when I came upon the birth of a new sport, one that I think may be indigenous to Rockaway: duneboarding. Sand deposited by the hurricane had been bulldozed into three big hills on the beach just west of 116th Street, and the neighborhood kids were “sledding” down them on their Boogie boards. Some kids were sitting, some were doing belly-flops, others were lying on their backs, in the luge position. The sand made for a nice soft landing, and then the kids dragged their boards back up the hill to go again. There were dozens of kids, from toddlers to teens, climbing and sliding and shrieking on the artificial dunes. Maybe they’ve been doing this in the Sahara for millennia, but if so why has there never been a bid to make duneboarding an Olympic sport?

I was back in Manhattan by a little after sunset, which occurred at 4:47 P.M. on the first day of standard time, cruising for a spot. I was determined to find a Tuesday-Friday spot, to take advantage of the High Alternate Side Holidays—Idul-Adha and Election Day on Tuesday, and Veterans Day on Friday. I spurned a Monday-Thursday spot, hard as it is not to take the first spot you come to. I have been trying to figure out how to combine bike riding with car parking. On days when I have to sit in the car, should I ride my bike over to where the car is parked, lock it up there, and come back for it in order to ride to work? Or do I dare to put the bike where I hope to park the car, so I won’t have to backtrack? Last Friday, I couldn't decide, so I took the train to work.

The new bike lanes were the subject of an excellent article in the Times this week, in the Arts section, by Michael Kimmelman (“Pleasures of Life in the Slow Lane”), who made some of the same observations that I was just about to make. For instance, now that Janette Sadik-Kahn, Mayor Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner, has built more bike lanes, the same thing is happening with bikes as happened with cars when Robert Moses built more bridges: there are more of them.

The last time I biked to work regularly was during the Koch Administration. He had painted some lines on Sixth Avenue and called it a bike lane, but by the time Rudy Giuliani took over, those lines had been erased. No one took them very seriously anyway. The new bike lanes are more permanent-looking, and some of them are downright dedicated, with medians of potted plants or lanes of parked cars between the bike lane and heavy traffic, and even an extra lens in traffic lights to regulate both bikes and cars in turning lanes. I was curious to see if I would actually feel safe in a bike lane. And the answer is:

No, not particularly. And it’s not because of the trucks double-parked, or the taxis dropping off passengers, or the jaywalkers popping out like Jack-in-the-boxes from between parked cars. It’s because of the other bicyclists. With rare exceptions, they are as cut-throat as speeding taxi-drivers.

My model for bicycling is European: I think of the matrons I saw in the French countryside, pedalling serenely into the village for a cabbage or whatever, wearing flower-print housedresses, bedroom slippers, and maybe an apron. In Ravenna in winter, Italian women in fur coats cycle majestically alongside the canals. New York City is not exactly the People’s Republic of China yet, but there are throngs in the new bike lanes. O.K., I exaggerate: at one red light I counted nine bikes waiting to cross the street. But I do not exaggerate when I say that everybody is trying to get ahead of everybody else.

Biking in the city does have its aesthetic pleasures. If not for the (unprotected) bike lane on Sixth Avenue, I would probably not go out of my way to visit the flower district. And from the (protected) bike lane on First Avenue I admired a brick wall with ivy growing nine stories high and changing color. The bike lane on Broadway below Times Square is a joke, clotted with oblivious pedestrians, tourists lugging wheeled suitcases, and panhandlers in Minnie Mouse costumes. But Robert Moses’ Law also works in reverse: if you narrow Broadway down to one lane and have it dead-end at Herald Square, the cars go elsewhere, leaving a few precious blocks of midtown wide open for bicyclists.

The first day I rode to work, I got all the way to Times Square before realizing that although I had remembered my Kryptonite lock, I had forgotten the key. I had been planning on checking out this garage that rents parking spots for bikes, so I went over there: the Hippodrome. “Sure, we can lend you a lock,” the manager said. I gave them my credit card, they lent me a chain and a lock, and I signed up to park my bike in midtown for twenty dollars a month.

Am I crazy? Who would have believed that a car owner who goes to so much trouble to find free parking on the street would pay to garage a bicycle? The fact is that it’s not so easy to find a pole to lock your bike to in midtown. There are no more old-fashioned parking meters—they have all been replaced by bulky MuniMeters. The bike racks that the city has provided are always at capacity, at least in midtown (another example of “Build it and they will come”). Twenty dollars a month for a safe place to park a bike seems like a bargain—it costs ten times that to garage a car in the city. And I enjoy coasting onto the smooth floor of the Hippodrome, past the arm lowered to keep cars from leaving without paying.

Bike parking is vertical: you heft your front tire over a hook high on the wall and line up both tires along the groove of a rod that extends below it. It is not without its surprises. The other day after work, I went to get my bike and found a huge heavy chain on it, like something that belonged to Marley’s Ghost. I went to the office to see what was up. I still had time to get where I was going, so I wasn’t unduly upset. “Someone has put a big heavy chain on my bike,” I told the attendant. He came to take a look and then went back and checked the computer. Apparently, the monthly fee had not yet been charged to my credit card. He took care of that, and put a little blue sticker on my bike, so the inspectors would not incarcerate it again. Now I know what happens if a cyclist tries to park for free in the Hippodrome. It’s the bike equivalent of having a boot put on your car.

Meanwhile, back in the car, cruising for a parking spot last Sunday evening, I set my watch to amuse myself by seeing exactly how long it would take: twenty minutes, including a few minutes spent in a spot that I thought was a bonanza until a study of the signs revealed that it was in a No Standing Monday-Friday zone. Finally, at the far end of my range, in the last spot before the river, I got lucky. While I was getting my stuff out of the trunk, a car pulled up and the driver asked if I was going out. I smiled and shook my head no. He gave me a thumbs-up to acknowledge my triumph in finding a spot that would be good for the next nine days. In the morning, I rode my bike back to the car to get a jar of mayonnaise and some Kalamata olives out of the trunk (I had cleaned out the refrigerator in Rockaway) and passed a tow truck removing a car from the No Standing zone.

King Tide

Sitting in the car at high tide on Thursday felt like camping in the rain. Hopes ran high that the streetsweeper wouldn’t come, but why would a little rain stop him? The cops were out: they waddled from car to car like members of the Wide Family, their chartreuse foul-weather gear stretched over the multiple items of police equipment padding their hips.

The Broom comes early on this block. On Monday, it rumbled around the corner at 8:40 A.M. Thursday it showed up at 8:44. That means that if you get here at nine looking for an 8:30-10 spot, you may be too late. But if you happen to be sitting here already, in a nice, single-car spot between a No Standing sign and a curb cut, once the Broom has passed, the pressure is off. You can turn off the lights and the windshield wipers, move the seat back, and enjoy the view: gingkos (still green), an ornate tower top, a line of pigeons silhouetted on a roof.

Last week, after getting the water shut off at the bungalow (let it snow!), I went down to the boatyard to turn in the lanyard—the red coil with the black plastic ring that fits over the ignition on my outboard—so that the motor can be put away properly for the winter. The boat has been out of the water since the hurricane.



I went out on the bay three or four times this summer: visited the BOATEL, the art project/hotel made of boats at the 59th Street Marina, and ran aground at low tide off Broad Channel (I had to use the oars as poles to get out of the muck and then row). But I had no engine trouble, and that, combined with being away a lot, made me decide not to put the boat back in the water. I like having a season where I can say I had no engine trouble.

Ahead of me, a car left its spot and zipped across the street to take a spot that that had just opened on the Tuesday-Friday side. No sooner had he pulled out than another car swam in. It was strangely silent in the car: I had to keep the windows rolled up against the rain. The only sound was the swish of tires on wet asphalt.

The marina boss had left for the weekend, so I put the lanyard in the office with a note and called to make sure he'd found it. I also wanted to ask if he'd heard about the king tide. It was in the Times on October 26th: “A king tide will be running Wednesday and Thursday because gravitational forces of the sun, the moon and the earth will be lined up in a cue shot of fleeting geometry and rare power.” (The article, by Jim Dwyer, was about how this extra-high tide was a harbinger of things to come: the ocean level has been rising and could be this high all the time by 2080.)

The Boss had not seen the Times. “That’s all I need,” he said. “Another high tide.” During Hurricane Irene, he had had a foot and a half of water in his house. “Did they say how high it would be?”

"One to two feet above normal."

“Didja hear I got robbed?” I had heard, but I wanted him to tell it. “The restaurant barge. Twice.“ The barge, formerly a restaurant, is moored behind the dock. I've been dying to get in there; I see that they've been working on it, but it doesn't look much like a restaurant yet.

"What did they get?" I asked

"Tools and liquor. There were five of them. They saw the liquor, so they came back for more. My good tools. We’re trying to catch them. We got cameras. We took fingerprints.” There are cops living on the dock, so they may very well catch them. He didn't sound as mad as he must have been when it happened. I heard he was in a really bad mood.

The garbage recycling truck pulled up alongside me and started crunching glass and plastic. When it moved on, the garbagemen followed it, on the sidewalk. One of them was wearing big orange gloves, rubber boots, and gold earrings—she was a garbage girl.

Across the street, in a pile of bulky recyclable items, was a memento mori: the grille off a small truck or an S.U.V., silver gray. “Don’t look at that,” I wanted to say to the Éclair. The rain had tapered off by the time I got out of the car, at ten. I'd been sitting there so long that in Jamaica Bay the king tide would have begun to ebb already.

Milestone

It happened in Mifflinburg. Or was it Mifflinville? No, it was definitely Mifflinburg. I had taken my usual detour off I-80 on the way back from Ohio, cutting south in the middle of Pennsylvania to state route 45. I was poking along, sharing the road with the occasional horse-and-buggy, watching on the right for Wenger's Discount Grocery Outlet, where I like to stock up on dented cans of soup (I don't know why I get so excited about half-price dented cans of soup; it must be genetic). And then it happened: the odometer flipped over to 77,777.7.

Soon after that, my detour sprung a detour, because of flood damage along the Susquehanna River. I drove north along the river to Milton, a small but industrious town (home of Ettore Boiardi, a.k.a. Chef Boyardee), and when I got back to I-80 I found out that I had been on something signposted as the "Blue Detour." After another hundred miles or so, there was a massive traffic jam near the Delaware Water Gap, so I got off 80 again, and found myself on the "Green Detour." I have been seeing signs for these detours for years, and can report that they are indeed quite colorful.

I have been taking full advantage of the traditional fall parking holidays—between Columbus Day and Succoth, I didn't have to move the car for a week. But on the way home from New England last weekend, I was kicking myself for not having a copy of the alternate-side-parking calendar on me. I knew there were more holidays coming up, but I didn't know which side of the street to park on. I found a Tuesday-Friday spot, behind a huge Army truck, like something that had gotten separated from a convoy. It turned out that either side of the street would have worked, since both Thursday and Friday are religious holidays.

I was hoping the Army truck would be gone when I returned to do my civic duty on Tuesday morning. But no. It made for a dismal prospect: the back of a huge convoy-style armored truck, with tires as big as office cubicles and a dipstick the size of a pool cue. Needless to say, the US Army does not observe street-cleaning rules, so when the Broom came, I expected to have trouble squeezing back in between the tank and the lineup of S.U.V.s behind me.

The Broom came at 7:40, and I was able to zip back across the street and get in position (albeit about two feet from the curb) while the S.U.V.s were still lumbering around, holding up traffic. I had to pull up practically under the Army truck so that they could parallel park, and then ask them to back up so I could get closer to the curb.

Actually, I will be moving the car on Friday anyway, because I have to go out to Rockaway. It's time to turn the water off for the winter. My wonderful neighbors, who for the past two winters have been parking my car in exchange for getting to use it, recently told me that they're getting their own car, a GMC Jimmy. "We'll still take care of your car!" my friend T. said. I know they love my car. Who could resist her? Here she is enjoying a ferry ride, surrounded, as usual, by S.U.V.s

I am going to have to come up with a new plan for the winter.