The End

I put this off by watching Bones with Pepper for like three hours. However, I told myself I would end the blog tonight, and that's what I'm going to do.

When the blog began, I was a college student with no idea how her life would go. I had no idea that over the next five and a half years, I would not only graduate from college, I would also find a professional writing job, serve in two Relief Society presidencies, move out of my parents' home, receive my Latter-day Saint temple endowment, serve as a temple worker, travel to Disneyland (twice), take a road trip to Illinois, go to New York City (three times), go to Arizona (twice), visit San Diego, buy a new car, and have my appendix removed.

Throughout all this, there were times when my life was scary and uncertain, and my belief was the only thing to fall back on. My religion has not been incidental but crucial to everything I've done. I've done my best to convey what it's like to live the ordinary life of a person of my background, and I hope you've enjoyed the experience.

Now it's goodbye. Once I figure out what I'm doing next, I promise to come back and add it to this post.

Finite.

Serendipitous

Context: This post is about the fifth and sixth days (and fourth and fifth days in the city) of my third New York City trip.

A few things come to mind about Little Brother's first experience in New York City.

Before we left for the Big Apple, he started his Instagram account, but he posted no photos. He explained that his first post would be a photo of him brushing his teeth on the streets of New York City. Okaaaay—?

Little Brother hated New York pigeons but rapidly became obsessed with the sparrows. At one point, a sparrow flitted past, and he yelled, "Oh my gosh. Marry me!" He added, "If I married a New York sparrow, I'd be happier than most people."

The final thing he really wanted from the trip was for me to take him for dim sum in Chinatown. On our last day (Monday), that's what we did. Bagels at Broadway Bagels, shopping for souvenirs (including at the Disney store and at this wild Japanese Line store), cookies at Levain Bakery, and dim sum at Shanghai Cafe. They had the best soup dumplings (dumplings filled with soup, not that you put in soup). Then we said goodbye to our sister, and then we left.

But that was Monday. Before that, Sunday.

Sunday morning we ate protein bars in Older Sister's apartment for our breakfast (we wanted to not eat out for at least one meal since Sabbath) and then attended sacrament meeting in the Manhattan temple chapel. Afterward, Central Park.

This entire trip, Little Brother and I had a devil of a time getting our phones to tell us anything other than the best subway trains to take. I guess the data in the city is over-saturated with users, because our phones just didn't seem able to pick up on basic navigation. However, they did pretty well in Central Park, which is ironic because it has traditionally been the most difficult part of the city to navigate.

Everything we wanted to see was happily located within a fairly small radius: the carousel, the Hans Christian Anderson statue, the Alice in Wonderland statue, the Balto statue. Along one of the walkways, we ran into delightful performers dressed as disembodied clothing/headless people. We stumbled across this beautiful fountain and square I don't recall seeing the last couple of times (Bethesda Fountain). It had a nice underground walkway with beautiful murals and acoustics emphasized by a musical group performing there. We also exited the park through the zoo, where we saw the famous animal clock.

Lunch was at one of the Central Park boathouses.

However, lunch was light and not that great, so after leaving the park, we partook of second lunch at Serendipity. (Serendipity 1 if you want to get snooty about it. I don't.)

If Tonn Ramen is designed to make patrons feel slightly uncomfortable, Serendipity is designed to make patrons feel...hmm. The bright pink paint, reflective surfaces, quirky signage, crowded tables, and rushed waiters kind of gave me an urge that I must have something better to do than being squashed with a bunch of strangers in a restaurant reflecting this level of inanity. Like, it was charming. But it also made me feel stupid and impatient.

We mostly went there for the frozen hot chocolate, which I'd been told was amazing. Sadly, it was merely adequate.

Our waiter, too, was rather touch-and-go. I could barely hear him over the din of the restaurant, and while he might have heard us, I don't think he was really listening. He forgot that I'd ordered a frozen hot chocolate, so I had to wait much longer than for mine than Little Brother did for his.

Little Brother overheard a patron at an adjacent table complaining that he'd received the wrong order. According to Little Brother, it went something like this:

PATRON: Oh, I didn't order this burger. I ordered the chicken basket with fries.

WAITER: What?

PATRON: I ordered the chicken basket with fries. I mean, this burger looks good. I'll eat it. But I'd also like a chicken basket to go if you could add that to my order.

WAITER: Okay. (picks up burger and walks away with it)

PATRON: What? What? Did you guys just see that?!

PATRON'S FRIENDS: Dude, calm down.

WAITER: I'm not going to calm down! I'm going to COMPLAIN. (heads off in search of manager)

Apparently whether you ever receive your food in this restaurant is a matter of serendipity. Ha. Ha ha. (Pretty sure this guy's friends were cracking similar jokes.)

Around this time, I headed off in search of the bathroom. Which was ridiculously hard to get to and required weaving between the many cramped tables.

Remember how we took tons of photos of ourselves on the Brooklyn Bridge two days before? Older Sister's phone has a setting for photo shoots, so the shots turned out looking weirdly professional. Little Brother had taken advantage of the situation by producing his toothbrush and snagging a photo of himself brushing his teeth on the bridge.

The photo looked ridiculous. In a good way. It looked like he was doing some kind of toothbrush modeling campaign. And now that Little Brother had the photo, he was determining the best way to present it on his Instagram account. Among other things, he toyed with it by assembling a Got Milk?-type image emblazoned with the word "Brush."

The Angry Chicken Basket Patron caught Little Brother's eye, so as I went to the restroom, he tried to figure out which phone in the room belonged to the Angry Chicken Basket Patron so that he could anonymously airdrop the "Brush." photo to him. Like you do.

When I returned from the restroom, the whole dining floor was abuzz with people who kept repeating the same thing over and over. I didn't think too much of it until I sat down at our table and we were approached by a random man.

RANDOM MAN: Is this you? (shows phone to Little Brother)

LITTLE BROTHER: Oh. sorry, that was an accident.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What?

LITTLE BROTHER: Well...

Turned out that Little Brother had accidentally airdropped his photo not to the Angry Chicken Basket Patron but to every iPhone user in Serendipity. That repeated word I kept hearing over and over? Little Brother's name. Because his iPhone name is simply "Little Brother's iPhone." He'd been slightly hunched over the table, trying to keep his face turned away so that nobody would recognize him as the odd kid brushing his teeth on the Brooklyn Bridge in the weirdly professional photo they'd just had airdropped to them by a stranger.

As we hustled out of there, the room was still abuzz with his name, but we escaped without any more encounters.

The rest of the day passed rather uneventfully. We took a train downtown to stroll in Greenwich's Washington Square Park, where Little Brother once again tried to airdrop his photo to strangers because I don't know why, exactly. 'Twas amusing, though.

(Slight tangent: I'd mentioned to Little Brother that during this trip, I wasn't opposed to going to the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. He said he didn't really want to do that, so I never investigated the possibility further. I didn't realize until just last week that we'd been mere blocks from it at this point and possibly even walked past it! I'm very annoyed with myself for not catching that.)

We then attended the charity event Older Sister was working on all weekend. Following that, we called our dad to wish him a happy Father's Day while we waited to be seated at Jacob's Pickle.

I don't even like pickles, but I was willing to endure them in the name of trying new things. The pickles that came on my chicken biscuit sandwich weren't bad, but they still weren't my favorite. The honey-drizzled chicken was my favorite. So was the chocolate banana biscuit we got on the side. You'll see below that my meal also came with mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy. The mushroom gravy almost made me sick because it was waaaaay too rich.

It was super dark in there.

Then, like I said, the next day was the last day. Bagels. Shopping. (Little Brother loooooved the Line store, which apparently is the first of its kind in the U.S. I liked it okay, but I was mostly amused by animations with subtitles translated into poor English that played on the wall behind the checkout counter. One of them showed an ugly human living his best life and said, "James is a narcissist. He's in love with himself." I laughed way harder than I should have.)

Levain's. Chinatown.

I wish I was eating one of these chocolate chip walnut cookies right now!

Cute soup dumplings. They were filled with crab and pork.

Then, home. Nothing of note happened on the way home, so I won't tell you about it. Suffice it to say that we were pretty excited (about the souvenirs we got our family) and pretty exhausted (for obvious reasons) by the time we landed back in good old Utah.

Eating and Watching Bernadette Peters Eat

Context: This post is about the fourth day (and third day in the city) of my third New York City trip.

Are you wondering about the title of this post?

It's pretty simple, really. On the Saturday of our trip, we ate a lot of delicious food. Older Sister had signed us up for a morning walking tour of Greenwich Village (a cute place). We grabbed breakfast at Lenny's Bagels on the way. I had a delicious bagel with cream cheese and lox, which I sadly do not have a picture of.

Lunch: After the tour, Older Sister had to rush off to an event her work was putting on, but Little Brother and I had a nice sit-down lunch. Turns out that Greenwich Village has an abundance of good Italian food, so I enjoyed tasty chicken piccata, my favorite Italian dish, at Trattoria Spaghetti. My chicken came with a piece of...what seemed to be...cornbread? But not exactly cornbread. Polenta?

Chicken piccata with potatoes and some cornbread-y stuff. There was also some garlicky spinach, not shown here. All very good!

We then grabbed gelato at a place called Grom. I had a flavor called crema di grom, which included chunks of cookies made from corn. Which also tasted like cornbread. Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up. Never have I ever had Italian food with so much corn!

Dinner: After Older Sister's work events and our matinee of Hello Dolly (more on that in a minute), we met up at Bann Restaurant, where we had a reservation. Guess what? Bann Restaurant serves Korean food! That's right. Older Sister, who has hated all "Asian food" her entire life, took us to not one but two Asian restaurants while we were visiting her! And they say people never change.

Older Sister ordered us a barbecue meal that we cooked ourselves over a tiny little grill.

Pork bun appetizer!

Rice and veggies and grilled beef, salmon, and shrimp! The meat was pre-marinated and so flavorful and good!

Older Sister grilling up some beef.

We ordered these pretty chocolate molten cakes for dessert! One for Little Brother and one for Older Sister and I to share.

What I'm trying to say is that we ate very well on Saturday.

And the Bernadette Peters part? Well, she ate very well on Saturday, too.

See, Little Brother and I had decided that our second Broadway musical for the trip would be Hello, Dolly. It featured Victor Garber (whom I knew from several made-for-TV musicals) as Horace Vandergelder, Gavin Creel (who was the original Jimmy in Thoroughly Modern Millie) as Cornelius Hackl, Charlie Stemp (a Broadway newcomer) as Barnaby Tucker, and Kate Baldwin and Molly Griggs (both of whom I know nothing about) as Irene Molloy and Minnie Fay. It also featured an actress named Melanie Moore as Ermengarde. Upon reading the playbill, I discovered that I have accidentally seen Melanie Moore in every one of her Broadway roles! She was Peter Pen in Finding Neverland and Chava in the revival of Fiddler on the Roof. I guess I'm her biggest fan or something?

But above and beyond all that, the show featured the one, the only Bernadette Peters as Dolly Levi herself! If you think you don't know who Bernadette Peters is, I promise you that you do. Find a clip of her voice on YouTube, and you'll likely recognize it. She's a mega star. Among all the other things she's done, she was a guest star in the first season of The Muppet Show and she played the voice of Sophie (the lady who sings "Paris Hold the Key to Your Heart") in the movie version of Anastasia. What a fun tie-in to the previous two days of our trip! In short, we were feeling pretty good about our choices because wouldn't seeing Bernadette Peters perform live be so fun?!

Yes, it would be! The show was great. The costuming was delightful. I thought the actors did a great job. Barnaby and Cornelius were classic Barnaby and Cornelius while Mrs. Molloy and Minnie were played as less uptight and less stupid, respectfully, than usual. Bernadette Peters and Victor Garber did a good job with their characters as well. My only real complaint was that apparently the director had asked them to be over-the-top and campy in places where it wasn't really needed. A funny line should be funny without too much of an affect.

The worst offender was a scene toward the end of the show. Dolly and Horace are eating in a a restaurant when a brawl breaks out. Horace leaves the table and joins the rest of the cast in a transition to a courtroom, but Dolly aka Bernadette Peters remained seated at the table and kept eating the stage food. I'd assumed the food was made out of plastic or cotton or something (some bits seriously looked like cotton balls), but she devoured every scrap while the rest of the scene went on behind her. Midway through the scene, Dolly is supposed to offer her services as a lawyer and join the rest of the characters, but even after the judge called for a lawyer, Bernadette Peters kept eating for, like, seven to ten minutes while the other actors waited.

It was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life (and that's saying something). Some folks in the theatre were laughing hysterically, but I didn't find it funny, just odd. I found myself thinking things like, "Did something go wrong?" "Is Bernadette Peters messing with the rest of the cast?" and "Does Bernadette Peters have it in her contract that she has to eat a certain time?" and "Did we really pay $49 to watch Bernadette Peters eat lunch?" Finally, though, she finished eating to thunderous applause, and the scene continued.

Little Brother looked this up and confirmed that it was a director's choice and not some kind of mishap or joke. Ummmm okaaaaay director person!

The last thing about Saturday that needs to be discussed is the shower at Older Sister's apartment. Remember how we went on a tour of Greenwich Village that morning? We saw lots of interesting things on the tour, like the theatre where Barbra Streisand got started, New York City's skinniest house, the apartment building where Benedict Cumberbatch stayed when he was on Broadway, and the Stonewall Inn. One of the most intriguing, things, though, was the Hess Triangle.

When the city wanted to widen the streets, this fellow Hess, who owned an apartment building on one of the streets in question, refused to cooperate, so the government ended up seizing his land for the public good. However, Hess retained a tiny triangle of land. Being the Saltiest Person on Earth™, he decided that the only appropriate course of action was to put a plaque on the tiny triangle stating he never donated his land to the public. (At least, the tour guide said it was him. The Internet disputes this by saying it was his heirs. Who I guess would then be the Saltiest People on Earth™.)

This thing is tiny. One person can stand on it comfortably, and that's it. It's probably the most American thing I've ever seen (I say with affection).

Guess what? There were two showers in Older Sister's apartment, and one was the size of the Hess Triangle!

Well, I'm exaggerating. Slightly. It was about the size of three Hess Triangles put together. There were no walls or anything; just a shower curtain. I couldn't even have the shampoo bottle in the shower with me because there was no room.

The Hess Shower was the only shower available after 11 p.m. by the agreement of the apartment tenants. (The other shower, which was a more normal size, activated pipes that were too loud for people to sleep through.) Apart from that, because it was the less-preferred shower, it was more likely to be free in general during target shower times.

I first used it on Friday after we got back from Brooklyn. I was careful to keep the shower curtain tucked, but imagine my dismay when I exited it and discovered that I hadn't done a good enough job and the entire bathroom was flooded.

Granted, the bathroom was tiny, but there was still a couple inches of water spread uniformly across the floor. I did my best to mop it up with my towel and all of my clothing before humbling myself enough to leave the bathroom, trek past one of Older Sister's oblivious roommates who was doing laundry right outside the bathroom door, and approach Older Sister.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: So...the bathroom is flooded...

Older Sister was gracious in not hating me and in letting me take another of her three towels to mop up the floor.

So on Saturday when I had to use the shower again, I kept my body completely vertical so that I didn't nudge any of the curtains out of place! When I dropped something and had to pick it up, I was forced to do a very careful squat to recover it.

I made sure to nab the big shower on Sunday night.

The Time Of Our Lives

Context: This post is about the third day (and second day in the city) of my third New York City trip.

Lots of people assume that I love Fraggle Rock for nostalgia purposes. In reality, I actually barely saw any episodes when I was a kid. I started getting into it through YouTube clips when I was seventeen.

You might remember that my junior year of high school was a tough time for me. I was held afloat by a combination of many things, one of which was my religion, one of which was my friends (especially Best Friend Boy), and one of which was Fraggle Rock. When you are completely and utterly depressed, why wouldn't you want to spend a lot of time in a place where cute fuzzy creatures dance and sing to banish their worries and cares? When you feel like most of your troubles come from not being able to connect with other people, how would it not be helpful to study a world where a different interpersonal conflict is studied in nearly every episode? Ya feel me?

Once I was properly introduced to the show, I glommed on to the precious Fraggles hard. They delighted me. That delight helped me feel better, and sometimes during hard things in later years, I would still turn to an episode that reflected my feelings or my situation.

Life after high school was always a bit precarious for me. I faced a lot of things I didn't feel prepared to face. But I was proud of myself for pulling through it without drifting back into clinical depression. I figured out what I needed to stay on top, and I sought it out as required.

Last year, though...I had a lot of difficult things happen really quickly. Some of them I couldn't talk about to protect other people. Some of them I didn't want to talk about because I was afraid of burdening other people. And some of them I knew no one would understand. So I just clammed up and kind of did the opposite of what I needed to do to take care of myself. I guess I figured that after being so vigilant for so long, and having gone through way worse stuff than what I was going through then, I was pretty invincible.

Ha.

Within a few months, I was...I don't know if I want to say clinically depressed again. I know clinical depression, and this wasn't really like that. I'd say it's more like situational depression, which the Internet tells me is a kind of depression people experience after a major life change. It involves a lot of the feelings of clinical depression, except it apparently doesn't usually leave you completely unable to cope for long periods of time like clinical depression does. When I was clinically depressed as a teen, I couldn't make myself do my homework most days or sometimes even brush my hair. But this time, I didn't feel that kind of listlessness or apathy; I did everything I normally did and more. I was productive yet felt terrible.

I got things back under control again, and all was mostly fine for a few months. However, around Christmas, the terrible feelings came back, and as I was hit by more big life changes (interpersonal crises, major surgery, and more) and other things completely outside of my control, they settled in to stay. I was not okay with that, so I surged forward to fix it. And whaddaya know—there's been improvement, and I now feel completely, absolutely fine for days at a time. But when I don't...

It's not a desirable situation.

But hey, you know what seemed like it might help? A delightful jaunt through an exhibit devoted entirely to Muppets, particularly Fraggles. It was the old medicine, the old relief, come back again in a newer and more potent form.

What I'm trying to say is that when Little Brother and I grabbed pastries from Starbuck's and headed for the subway to ride uptown to the Museum of the Moving Image to Astoria, Queens, I had very high hopes for the Jim Henson exhibit.

I'm happy to report that I was very much not disappointed!

Astoria turned out to be a quiet, cute neighborhood where people lived in actual houses. Tiny houses, but houses all the same. There were even yards! We walked around while we waited for the museum to open. I could tell that Little Brother was already enjoying himself much more than he was the day before. Score. Eventually we joined the other nerds at the museum (I was wearing my Wembley Fraggle shirt, obviously), and first thing we went to the Jim Henson exhibit.

Boy oh boy! That thing was pure joy. Pure. Joy. It was interactive, with video and audio and hand puppets to film a short clip with and a Sesame Street Anything Muppet to dress up. There were fascinating notes and bits of scripts and doodles and posters. And the puppets! I could tell you about them, but I'd rather just show you.

This was the first display (well, first after a cute little intro video). Kermit was sitting all lonely in this case opposite another case with a bunch of other puppets. It was like he was being shunned at a party.

Remember when we saw Carroll Spinney live? He had Oscar with him, but not Big Bird. Now we've seen them both!

My favorite!

Nigel, the original host of The Muppet Show.

Statler and Waldorf. It's funny that the museum is in Astoria since Waldorf's wife's name is Astoria.

The Swedish chef (with fake hands added since the puppeteers use their own hands).

Koozbanians! The Koozbanian pups are SO CUTE!!!

Zoot.

The sign that Gonzo pops out of at the beginning of the show!

And that's just a sampling of what this trove of wonders had to offer! This may surprise you, but we weren't even the biggest nerds at this museum. Most of the people were older folks or parents who didn't seem to know much about Jim Henson but who were trying to entertain their little kids. However, there was a group of college-aged guys who lingered for, like, ten minutes at every display case and spouted facts, figures, and trivia.

We definitely were the biggest Fraggle Rock nerds, though. Not even those guys lingered at the Fraggle Rock displays as long as we did. We examined every inch of those three puppets.

Cantus Fraggle, the wise wandering musician. Cantus is one of the two Fraggle Rock characters played by Jim Henson. The puppet of his other character, Convincing John, was totally creepy-looking, but I didn't get a photo of him.

The one, the only, Gobo Fraggle as he appears from Season 2 on! He looks so lifelike.

Uncle Travelling Matt!

We were fascinating by the hole in the back of Cantus's robes for his tail and by the instruments tucked into the folds. We were excited by the Doozer stick's in Gobo's vest pocket and by the details of his guitar. We examined Uncle Travelling Matt's baloobius and debated whether it was the same throughout the show or whether they used a different baloobius during Scared Silly. We also discovered that all of the Fraggle hair is made from ostrich feathers, even the tiny bits that we thought was fluff!

This talks about the many themes of Fraggle Rock. Notice that "hats" was added at the bottom in handwriting. There literally is an episode of Fraggle Rock entirely about a hat.

Doozers!

Cotterpin Doozer!

A piece of puppetry equipment from The Dark Crystal. STEVE WHITMIRE'S piece of puppetry equipment from The Dark Crystal.

From the opening day of MuppetVision 3D, one of Disney's funnest attractions!

After we'd toured the exhibit very thoroughly, we checked out the rest of the museum. There was an exhibit about YouTube as an artform and about special effects and costumes and merchandising and all kinds of film-related stuff. Little Brother used an interactive stop-motion display to capture a masterpiece involving a rainbow and two Shakespeares rising out of a troubled sea.

Once we'd seen everything else, though, Little Brother said, "Should we go through that exhibit again? Just to say goodbye?"

So we did! (And, yes, said a very reluctant goodbye to the Fraggle cuties.)

On our way out, we raided the gift shop. We scored some expensive chocolates, a magnet, a pin, a children's book, and a key chain.

Wembley is hard to draw right, but he looks pretty good here! Little Brother also bought the a chocolate bar with a Boober wrapper. We opted out of the Red on because it had coffee. :/

Ecstatic, we went in search of a lunch just as perfect as the Jim Henson exhibition. We ended up at Joe Asian & Sushi, where we threw down an amount of money equal to what I'd just blown at the MOMI gift shop. Worth it, though!

These crab wontons were SO GOOD!

Also this miso soup.

The sushi was yummy, too, but we overestimated how hungry we were and only ate about 2/3 of it.

After dropping our treasures back at Older Sister's place, we lazily made our way downtown to Wall Street and the 9/11 Memorial. Too lazily, as it turned out. We'd spend so much time in Astoria that we were waaaaaay behind schedule, so we spent an abbreviated amount of time at the museum and memorial. We had to go, though, since it was non-negotiable for Little Brother. (You can read more about my impressions of the museum here.) I was glad that we did; the solemnity was just right after the giddiness of the morning.

Then we met up with Older Sister. I'd basically told her, "When we're hanging out with you, we'll do whatever you want." And what did she want to do? She wanted to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and take pictures. So that's what we did. Older Sister's phone has a special photography mode that makes every picture look like it's been Photoshopped 1,000 times. Which meant that the photos turned out really, really well.

When we had enough pictures to satisfy Older Sister, we went into Dumbo (the Brooklyn neighborhood, not the elephant) and had a delightful dinner at Shake Shack! I had my very favorite chicken sandwich with herb mayonnaise (not pictured) and a delectable chocolate concrete.

After that, we were all very tired. We took the subway back to Older Sister's apartment, where I fell asleep feeling lighthearted, perfectly content after a nearly perfect day.

The First Day Is Always the Worst Day

I needed a vacation.

I hadn't gone on a real vacation since Disneyland eighteen months ago. I've gone out of town, sure, but always for reasons fraught with family obligation. I've taken days off work, but always for illness or holiday or church reasons or special events. I never get a chance to recharge or relax, and my ability to hold myself together has worn thin.

In January, I was investigating a possible trip back to Europe; I'd been tentatively planning to go in spring of 2018 for a while. So I didn't vacation at all in 2017, and I saved...and I saved...and I saved. I had plenty of money to go on a trip! My plan was book and pay for the trip in January...go in the spring...and buy a new car in the summer. I couldn't find anyone to go with, but I wasn't giving up; there was still time.

I ended up buying a new car in January instead, and I was hesitant to dip any more into my savings for an expensive trip. I felt like Heavenly Father was saying, "DON'T GO TO EUROPE THIS SPRING" because nothing was coming together. So I didn't book anything, though I was still toying with the idea of going later in the year. Then my appendix had to come out, and I had to pay the people who took it out, and it quickly became apparent that this year was just not going to be my year.

Little Sister and her husband went back to NYC around the same time I bought my new car, and she could only gush about the awesome Jim Henson exhibit that I'd wanted to see in New York City three years before. So when I was weighing the idea of going on vacation, I decided: what the heck? Why not go back to New York City so that I could finally see the dang exhibit, eat whatever I wanted, and spend time with Older Sister? The idea appealed to me, particularly because Older Sister would be working, so I could do whatever amused me. The subway system is easy to use; I could get around with no trouble and generally have a good time. And I could stay with Older Sister, which would be very inexpensive.

So (after several weeks of hemming and hawing), I finally committed to Older Sister to come and visit. However, after I'd done so, my mother cornered me and said that I should take Little Brother with me.

That kind of killed the point of the vacation, especially since Mom wanted me to take him to the Statue of Liberty and to Trinity Church and to her favorite restaurants and generally do a bunch of things that I had no intention of doing. So I laid it out straight for Little Brother: this was my trip, and while he could come, he would more or less have to do whatever I wanted.

He said okay, and the plans commenced.

Now, before you think I'm a mean older sister, let it be known that I made sure to include Little Brother in the plans. I made room for the things that were non-negotiable for him: going to the Times Square Disney store, going to the 9/11 Memorial, getting dim sum in Chinatown, a museum called the Museum of Jewish Heritage. He also wanted to go to the Jim Henson exhibit as much as I did.

The flight was booked and the musical tickets were purchased, and in what seemed like no time at all, the day of the trip had arrived and Little Brother and I were waiting at the airport late, late at night.

A few things to know about Little Brother:

• He loves Disney and knows the most about it. Of anyone. On earth. Probably.
• He loves theming.
• He loves beautiful things.
• He loves our Jewish heritage and taught himself to make delicious challah bread. Unlike me, he looks like a full-blooded Jew.
• He loves most of the things I love, except for Harry Potter, and his appreciation for Jim Henson has turned him into an accomplished amateur puppeteer.
• He secretly kind of wants to be YouTube famous.
• He has about a million original stories, musicals, and TV shows hiding inside his brain. They come out if you listen to him talk long enough.
• After our sibling date where I introduced him to sushi, sushi became his most-favorite food.

While we were waiting, he showed me a bunch of his Snaps from Snapchat, something I've never used. It would appear that Little Brother mostly uses it to send droll pictures to his friends.

As usual, we were red eyeing it out to New York. The flight was uneventful, but...odd. First of all, when we were loading onto the plane, a man with an accent I couldn't identify asked me (I think) to check one of his items in my name. He said (I think) that he and his wife and his two kids had too many items to check even though the flight had just announced complimentary checking since there was plenty of room.

They were a cute family, but they were strangers, so I refused. I felt bad, but it's basic airline safety not to accept things from people you don't know! Luckily, we saw later that the flight had checked their extra items with no fuss.

The other odd things about the flight were as follows: 1) The plane was abnormally loud. Little Brother was sitting next to me, but I could barely hear him all night. 2) The flight attendants were weirdly sneaky. I was half-asleep the whole flight, so I barely remember, but I seem to remember that they...didn't really talk? They just communicated with a series of gestures mostly, so that they didn't wake up passengers, I guess. But it was really hard for me to see said gestures since I was trying to sleep and wore no glasses or contacts! 3) The girl sitting next to us promptly fell asleep about as soon as the plane took off and barely moved all night. I even climbed over her to reach the restroom, yet she didn't stir. (Note: I went to the restroom barefoot. That was a mistake. The floor was gross.) Then, just moments before we landed, she woke up like clockwork. ???!

Neither Little Brother nor I slept well. I don't know about Little Brother, but I'd gotten up pretty early the morning of the day we'd left, and I was miserable and exhausted. I do know that at one point I accidentally squirted hand sanitizer in his eye, and he screamed at me. But it was a controlled scream. No one heard it but me. Not even the sleeping girl; she didn't move an inch.

I was adamant that we book our flight to JFK so that we could utilize the air train. Once we'd disembarked and gathered our luggage, we took the train, no problem, to Jamaica Station. Then we took the E Train to Times Square, walked a very long time through the subway to get to a connecting station, and took a 1 Train uptown.

Finally, we made it to the Upper West Side, where Older Sister lives in a beautiful 100-year-old building with 11 roommates. Yup, count 'em—11.

A few things to know about Older Sister:

• She's crazy ambitious. She took a double courseload and finished her six-semester graduate school program in three semesters, something that had never been done before.
• She's always wanted to live in New York City.
• She's always claimed to hate "Asian" food, saying it all tastes the same and is gross.
• She works for a non-profit that teaches underprivileged kids to dance.
• She, too, looks like she could be full-blooded Jewish. When she first moved to the city, she did some babysitting for a Jewish family and would sometimes be mistaken for a relative. On Saturdays, she wears her Sunday clothes to the Manhattan temple for a shift as a temple worker, and on the streets she's often mistaken for a Jew from a more conservative sect.
• She, too, secretly wants to be famous, but not YouTube famous.
• She loves the finer things in life and has never cared much for discomfort.

So even though I knew that she was living in a crowded apartment with no space to herself, it still amazed me. It's a testament to how much she loves New York City, because she's always been the kind of person who's always wanted to live somewhere that was nice and cutely decorated and very much her own.

Not that the apartment wasn't not nice, it just barely had room to exist at all. The whole thing, square-foot-wise, surely didn't exceed the amount of space I share with my two roommates. And her bedroom, which sleeps two people, is about the same size as my bedroom minus the closet. My bedroom is okay, but on the small side, for a single person; for two people, it would be pretty cramped!

The roommate had kindly stayed elsewhere so that Older Sister could have us in her room with her. I got the top bunk of the bunk bed. Little Brother got a cot-type bed on the floor. We could hang out in the apartment, but we couldn't wear shoes while we did so. We could shower in one of two bathrooms (except if it was after 11:00 p.m., in which case we had to shower in a tiny little bathroom—more on that later). Before she left for work, Older Sister presented us with a brassy-looking set of keys. One for the apartment building; one for the apartment. We were cautioned to be very careful not to break the lock, which had apparently happened before.

We crashed for an hour or so. Then...the city.

I gave Little Brother a first day similar to my first day on my first trip. First, the Disney store, which was everything Little Brother had dreamed of. Then lunch at Junior's. I'd heard that the food was better if you ordered something Jewish-style.

Sadly, it was still kind of meh. However, it pleased Little Brother to order a brisket sandwich with a latke and applesauce.

After, we took a subway downtown. At this point, we discovered that while the subway was easy to use (seriously—this was the first trip where I was the subway navigator, and there were hardly any bumps), our smartphones didn't seem to operate properly on the streets. (Over-saturation of people sucking up data?) It took us approximately six million years to find the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

The museum was not what we were expecting. The lady at the front desk asked us how we'd heard of it, and I breezily said, "We were just looking for a good Jewish museum!" But whether it was a good Jewish museum is...up for debate. There was some good stuff, but it wasn't very well-presented, and they kind of brushed over the Holocaust, mostly focusing on Jewish culture before it and how said culture recovered after. There were some cool artifacts, but I didn't learn very many new things. The most interesting tidbit was the fact that in some countries during Hitler's regime, Jews who didn't have "Jewish" names were required to take on the name or middle name of Israel or Sara.

Following the museum, we crashed. I was incredibly exhausted: dead on my feet and barely aware. I had no idea how I was going to stay up to watch Anastasia that night. But after lazing in Older Sister's apartment for a bit, I summoned the energy to arise, dress, and lead Little Brother to Tonn Ramen.

Older Sister, she who hates all Asian food, picked Tonn Ramen for dinner. She'd tried it and actually liked it! However, she ended up staying at work late and then babysitting afterward, so she didn't join us for our first taste of restaurant ramen.

Tonn Ramen is one of the more eccentric places I've been in New York City! Little Brother described the restaurant as "in a garage." It was below street level, tiny, and crowded. Everything about it seemed to be designed to make diners as uncomfortable as possible so that they would order, eat, and leave. The whole front of the restaurant was open, so we could feel the breeze from the street. The bar stools were difficult to keep a seat on, and I could never quite get myself into a position where I didn't feel I was about to fall off. The waiters whisked from place to place, quickly collecting orders which were then assembled in a matter or minutes. Not that anyone was rude or made us feel unwanted—but there was a slight feeling of, "Oh, we're very busy, so you should be glad we could squeeze you in!" Coupled with the fact that the restaurant was open during limited hours, the general air was one of exclusivity.

In any case, we quickly ate our ramen and paid. Mine is pictured below. It was tasty, although it was still ramen.

The vegetables and spices woke me up a bit. By the time we got to the Broadhurst Theatre, I was feeling much more excited about taking Little Brother to his first Broadway musical!

However. While Anastasia was delightful, it was rough. They completely rewrote the plot and dialogue, losing a lot of what made the animated movie so good. There also was a nice opportunity for them to tie up one character's philosophical qualms (his father was one of the guards who shot the royal family to death, so he is committed to making sure Anastasia is actually dead; his turn of heart would have been more realistic had it been revealed that his father actually helped Anastasia escape), but they passed that over for some unconvincing mumbo-jumbo. Overall, the movie, with its magic and demons and sold souls, actually seemed a lot more realistic than this historically accurate version. The special effects were dope, though, and the performers did do a good job with what they had.

We briefly stage-doored so that Little Brother could get a quick video of Christy Altomare for his friends. Then we took the subway home, utterly exhausted. (Confession: I'd fallen asleep for several seconds during the show.) As I showered (in the big shower) and hauled myself up the bunk bed ladder, I was wondering if this trip was a good idea or if I would regret it.

My Week with HelloFresh

After my venture into the world of Blue Apron, I succumbed to trying HelloFresh. I was having way too much fun! I'd learned several new dishes with Blue Apron, and I was hungry for what HelloFresh could teach me. And feed me.

My first two recipes were Lobster Ravioli and Shrimp with Tomatoes and Tarragon Cream Sauce and Mushroom Chicken Gravy over Couscous with Lemony Arugula.

First Impressions: My first impressions of HelloFresh were a wild ride. I was very impressed upon seeing the menu. The first two weeks of HelloFresh offered a lot more recipes I wanted to try than the first two weeks of Blue Apron did. However, I was less impressed when I realized that two of the four recipes I selected were "premium," meaning that I had to pay $10 extra to try them. (Both were seafood-based. Other premium recipes offered by HelloFresh on other weeks offer other luxury proteins like duck.) I was annoyed that the best recipes cost extra money when it's already REALLY EXPENSIVE. Whatever. With my super steep discount, I could afford $10 extra a week. Even if it was totally irritating.

Then my box came. My box had been attacked by a bear, apparently.

When I unpacked the box, I was annoyed again because there was like double the amount of packaging that had been in my Blue Apron boxes. So I had to throw away/recycle a ton of stuff. But unlike with Blue Apron, the ingredients came pre-divided by recipe, and that was nice.

Because fish tends to spoil more quickly, I started with the Lobster Ravioli and Shrimp with Tomatoes and Tarragon Cream Sauce.

You'll notice that the ravioli came pre-prepared. I guess that's to be expected since it is lobster ravioli. But that did disappoint me a little. I want to learn new skills here!

I began to prepare the veggies and heat the water for the ravioli. As I began the recipe, I noticed that it was kind of difficult to follow. The writing was a little confusing; a lot of steps had to happen simultaneously, but it wasn't clear that they were happening simultaneously until you read through it a few times. So I felt rushed, rushed, rushed as I jumped from chopping tarragon to cooking tomatoes to straining ravioli to rinsing shrimp.

The cream sauce recipe was very simple to the point of being ingenious. It was just grape tomatoes, a few ounces of sour cream, a bit of butter, the tarragon, salt and pepper, and shrimp. (The recipe called for using only a tablespoon of tarragon and adding it gradually to be sure you liked it, but I just added it all in.) Soon (within just thirty-five minutes) everything was ready!

The Verdict: The sauce was delicious! I usually take my pasta with a healthy heap of Parmesan, but this recipe didn't need it. I also thought that the amount of tarragon was perfect. (Though tarragon does taste slightly of black licorice, which I love but which most people don't. So you may not agree with my assessment if you tried it.)

The ravioli, on the other hand, was nothing special. I've had lobster ravioli in New York and at Olive Garden, and both times it was far better than the HelloFresh ravioli. This wasn't bad, just...a little tasteless. Not very lobster-y. What exactly did I pay $10 extra for? In any case, there was definitely enough for three filling meals.

What I'd Do Differently: This recipe would be simple to replicate, except for the lobster ravioli. That's okay, though—next time I'll just use my grocery store pasta of choice, mushroom agnolotti.

A few days later, I prepared the Mushroom Chicken Gravy over Couscous with Lemony Arugula.

I've never cooked with fresh thyme before, so that was exciting. I've also never made couscous before except from a box, and it was always the tiny, gritty kind with lots of spices. This recipe called for Israeli couscous, a fluffy pearl-like couscous that apparently was created by enterprising food people to combat a rice shortage in Israel some time ago.

Also...arugula. Something else I've not only never cooked but rarely eaten. I was very suspicious of the arugula. The recipe called for washing it and tossing it uncooked with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon juice. However, I remained unsure. I was afraid  that when my children ask me on my deathbed what my greatest regret is, I will say, "Allowing HelloFresh to convince me that tossing uncooked arugula with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon juice would actually make it edible."

Once again, the recipe was a little jumbled and everything was happening simultaneously, making me feel a little frantic as I prepared the produce, cooked the couscous, seared the chicken, tossed the arugula, moved the chicken to the oven, and made a pan gravy from the fond, the mushrooms, the garlic, the chicken stock concentrate, the thyme sprigs, the mustard, the sour cream, some water, and some salt and pepper.

I cannot stress how delicious this smelled while cooking! The scent of fresh thyme was so heavenly! When everything was done, I plated it right up with a bit of reserved thyme and a quarter lemon, which I squeezed over the chicken, gravy, and couscous.

The Verdict: This. Was. Incredible. The chicken was juicy and tender, the mushroom gravy was super flavorful, and the unseasoned couscous was a needed contrast to the rich flavors of the gravy and the lemon juice. The arugula, sadly, was as I feared: arugula that was still arugula, lemony or no. I ended up eating a few pieces per serving and tossing the rest.

I was glad that this recipe was so delicious and that it taught me some new things. It was pretty easy and quick, too, taking only fifty minutes from prep to plate. The only negative was that this was the first subscription box meal that actually was only sufficient for two servings. Except for the arugula. There were more than two servings of arugula. There was enough arugula to feed a small army of people who only eat arugula.

What I'd Do Differently: Nothing! Okay, I wouldn't serve lemony arugula as one of my side dishes, but everything else about this meal was magnifique.

So ends my first week of HelloFresh! After finishing this delight, I left for New York City with my second HelloFresh week scheduled for my return. I'll tell you how my second week measured up, but not before the tale of my vacation. Stay tuned!