squinchy faced in new york city

After much online price comparing, we booked the hotel reservations for our trip to NYC on Hotwire.com. Then we got ready. We drove up to Huntsville Ontario and picked up Jacob at his summer sports camp. He had done lots of sailing, windsurfing, canoing and kayaking and looked very handsome and strong when we found him in the crowd of parents and departing campers. We wisked him home for a night in his own bed and then drove 5 1/2 hours to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown NY. What a lovely drive through the farmland and mountains. Cooperstown is a pleasant and quaint, expensive though.

We ate breakfast in this little diner was the cheapest and the friendliest. It was packed with locals. The Hall of Fame was crowded. The exhibits of old stuff are the best. My favorite were the antique games. In the museum shop we bought hats and t-shirts and tank tops and a cell phone holder with the Hall's logo for Jacob .

We bought a fitted minor league team hat for Eli but it was small on him when he tried it on back in Toronto, so Jacob inherited that one too! Jacob is a clothes horse of the first order. The store had tons of hats. Jacob wanted a Japanese club hat but that was the only thing they did not stock.

I love to draw Paula when she snoozes, here she is doing it again at our Holiday Inn Midtown Manhattan. I think she's so beautiful. Jacob is sick. As soon as we arrived he got sick. We were really mad at him when he wasn't looking or listening. Maybe we should have gone alone. But he loves to travel.

We had an outdoor pool on the rooftop of our hotel. It was a nice size and and full of people. Almost no one spoke English. Lots of northern Europeans. It was a refreshing dip but gave Jacob ear troubles for the rest of the trip. He was such a trooper when I pushed him to walk to Chelsea and then the Empire State Building, only about 90 blocks, then Paula got him to stand in 1 1/2 hours of lineups to get to the observation deck level of the Empire State Building. We sound like crazy parents no? It was a great view though. The city at night all lit up. Needless to say we took the subway back to the hotel. We flopped on the beds, our legs and feet were aching. Jacob woke up hallucinating and sleepwalking. We heard this thumping sound. He was trying to open the door to the hallway but it was catching on the night latch. Thump! bang. Thump! bang.

Paula tried to comfort him but it wasn't working. I held him and shouted at him, then shook him a bit but it escalated and then he was screaming. I covered his mouth. I was worried that the neighbours would call security or worse the cops might show up. I plopped him in the shower and tried to calm him down and wake him up. It worked and he came out of it. He calmed down and we all went to bed. He barely remembered any of it the next morning.

I had fevered hallucinations as a kid. I hated it worst than anything. I wish someone could have snapped me out of them. My mom just comforted me too as I went slowly crazy in my fever. Sooner or later a doctor would show up at the house and give me a shot. My older son Eli had something similar. I remember when he peed in the oven. We found out when we tried to bake something. What a smell.

We went underground to ride the Manhattan Subway system to Yankee Stadium too. It's hard to draw when you have your family with you. I didn't want to shut them out but I managed to sneak a few sketches in. It helped that I bought a small Fabriano drawing book at Lee's after we visited the New York Artist's League. It was much easier to whip that baby out and bang away with the pencil and eraser. Ok that sounds silly but I'm trying to invent some inspiring drawing speak to give me bigger public journaling balls.

This guy and his wife studied their bibles intently on our ride on the D train to the B train. Another rider, a middle aged black woman, loved my drawing of this man. She just loved it.

We scalped tickets to the Yankees Game. It was the 18th last game before they tear down the historic stadium. There were no tickets anywhere except upper deck at 150 per ticket from the scalpers. Every scalper I met I said "bleachers" to. They turned up their noses and walked away. Until finally one guy said OK at 50 bucks a piece. I stalled a bit and he came back with 40 a pop.

Behind our seats were a couple from north of Denver who paid 90 bucks in advance. We got a nice deal! The scalper walked us right through the ticket turnstile and then practically to our seats where I flipped him the $120. Sweet!

But it was raining and there was a major chance the postponement could turn into an outright rainout. We all waited for about an hour and then hurray! They rolled off the tarp and soon it was 'play ball'. We knew when we bought the tickets that if it rained the money was down the toilet. We were leaving the next day and couldn't use a rain check. I chatted with everyone. It was an alcohol free zone and almost everyone behaved civilly. There were lots of Yankee fans making the pilgrimage to see the hollowed ground of their baseball idols.

On the way back to the hotel on the subway I tried to draw again. The trains move so fast and rock so bad that it's practically impossible to get anything looking right. Plus these New Yorkers, man, they are way too alert and hard to get a long look at. Everyone's eyes are darting around like something bad's going to happen, but maybe I'd get used to it and hey, maybe they don't mean anything by it. It's a very tolerant place and artists are pretty harmless right? Plus they see them all the time. Maybe it was just me.

We wandered through Central Park and listened to a band under a platform. They were fantastic and made me cry. It was magical. This guy sat and listened too. It was the best moment of the trip. Jacob gave them some money as they packed up to go. I wish they played longer.

On our last day we went back to the lower east side. We ate at Kampuchea and everyone shared their food, passing forkfuls and spoonfuls to each other like we were feeding babies. Jacob bought an electric guitar, a cheap knockoff of a stratocaster. It had a classy English name, Washburn, made somewhere in China. He played it on the drive all the way home to Toronto.

We got him a book from which he taught himself chords. We stopped at Economy Candy, a giant candy store and loaded up on chocolate and gum, plus we had to get cupcakes for the road at Sugar Sweet Sunshine. We drove home in 8 1/2 hours. It was liking driving down the street. We floated back to Toronto.