Thursday after Thanksgiving....

 Caught in the middle. Tutoring at 4:30---whatever I want to do before that is possible.Just returned to the chemo pills, and feel a little inhibited in the body. At odds. 

Last Thursday's thanksgiving get together was very pleasant. Just the four of us: my cousin Kara, her sister Kayla, Kayla's husband Stan and myself. Very mellow---very relaxed conversation. Easy trip both ways by subway. It took place in Kara's new co-op apartment---on Prospect Place near Washington Avenue, about four blocks east of Flatbush, the border between Prospect Heights and Park Slope. Interesting walk between the Eastern Parkway subway stop and Kara's apartment house. Co-ops and condos going for sky high prices, but still very much a sense of the working class black and Caribbean communities that were in that neightbohood before gentrification changed. It is an odd contrast. Kara's apartment is extremely small--yet I would bet that she paid around $500,000 for it. Maybe I am wrong--maybe it was less--but prices around there are heavy.

It was Kara who brought me in as a substitute at ps 163, an elementary school in Bath Beach. I really enjoyed working there--a very interesting and eclecic group of kids. It ended in 2009 (does not really seem like so long ago) when I was hired by computer and then the principal asked me not to come in, but I received the message not to come in when I was already four blocks away. So they accepted me, and actually I remember having a really pleasant and interesing day there, but my taking the job seems to have gotten the principal angry, and I was never called again. Of course, I was at Friends most of the time anyway, so it did not factor in much in term of work--but I would have liked to go out there again. A long trip from the upper west side to Bath Beach, but worth it for the whole experience.

That Friday night in 2009 I returned to Friends to see a dance concert there. Of course I knew many of the dancers. So a full day, first the subbing, then maybe a Friends basketball game and finally the dance concert, all before I returned to my apartment. So easy to do in those days. Now, stamina is definitely an issue.I would like so much to go out to a movie or a bar in Brooklyn after my tutoring session, but mostly I am too tired to do so. The chemo works its effects.

I am waiting for a call from the social worker at Lenox Hill---I need some help with applications for the new year, but I would like to go to the Drama Bookstore and lose myself in a play or memoir. Possibly soon---will report later.