Thanks to everyone who asked about the result of the finals...I-POD was voted "Best Solo Show" of the festival!!! Congrats to Nandita Chandra on the performance and Natalie Menna on the writing. Thanks to everyone who came out to vote. Such fun to be a part of the festival. So much fun that I was exhausted and had to rest for a week.
So I’ve been spending a lot of time around my apartment. I discovered a couple horrible TV shows. 16 and Pregnant makes me cry like a huge blubbering pregnant lady, Repo Games makes me embarrassed to be an American…but I digress.
The real discovery is that my building has a magic windowsill in the lobby. No, I’m not delirious with pregnancy hormones. There’s a large double window whose deep sill is just right for sitting height. When I first moved in, I noticed random objects on the sill from time to time. I thought they were items left in the lobby at first…a couple books, a scarf, some figurines. Each gone (I thought claimed) by the next time I walked by.
But this week I saw a box of dvd’s sitting there. While I checked my mail, someone flipped through the box and took a few of the dvd’s. I realized this was a windowsill for things that were up for grabs. A “take a penny, leave a penny” philosophy. I scored dvd’s of Notorious (now I get to watch Antonique Smith sing whenever I please), Cowboys and Aliens (for the hubby) and Varsity Blues (‘cause that’s just awesome).
Yesterday, a couple cardboard baby books were up for grabs. Just right for the little guy I’ve got on the way. Since I have benefitted from the windowsill, I figured it was my turn to leave a penny. I took down a box of no longer wanted belongings that accumulated when we unpacked from the move. A purse that was in good shape, an oversized plaid jacket, books we somehow had double copies of. They were all gone within the half hour it took me to go to the store. Magic!
My old apartment had nothing like this. Do other buildings have this system? Have I been missing out all these years? For five years I lived in Little Italy. Have you seen the building that is painted red, white and green for the Italian flag? I was the two windows on the right side of the green floor. I’m probably in hundreds of tourist photos because I happened to look out the window at the moment a camera flash aimed at our flag building went off. It was a fourth floor walk-up that constantly smelled like garlic bread. The ninety-year-old Italian woman below us had lived in her apartment for sixty years and was paying $44 in rent. Two pages of the three-page lease were about the lead paint underneath the dozens of cracked paint layers on the walls. We called it “charming.” It was a 120 year-old tenement building that was barely standing and depending on your affinity for garlic bread, it held nothing as charming as the magic windowsill. I’d say this new place is a keeper.
“ Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. ”
Tom Robbins
