halloween decorations (and costumes) and a visit to brooklyn heights

there are two houses in the neighborhood that have this large black cat on their brownstones.

it's amazing how it moves . .

i love all the pumpkins . . though it is a lot to compost afterwards!

 

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 i drove out to brooklyn today, to visit with a dear friend whom i haven't seen in quite a number of years . . 

a view of manhattan and the brooklyn bridge from the esplanade . . the day began very rainy, but by noon it had stopped and the light over the city was a silvery grey.

we went to a local pizza restaurant in her new neighborhood. she moved with her husband about three or four months ago to a new (very small) apartment around the corner from the place pictured above, and to a new job that happens to be housed in the first unitarian universalist church of brooklyn (the church whose service we've zoomed with throughout covid, and where we've all attended sunday and christmas eve service in the past). for the past few years she's been studying to get her master's degree in childhood education and recently found a job at the imagine early learning center there. it sounds like a wonderful position and she says that the children and their families are all very nice.

we had delicious pizza (very thin crust - always a mark of a good pizza according to my dad) and i had an espresso and panna cotta for dessert (she treated, and i hope to reciprocate very soon).

 

we met in 1998 at a waldorf coop pre-school in which we had enrolled our two year olds, in park slope, brooklyn . . we don't know how we got on this other side of parenting . . it warms my heart to be in touch again.

 

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chanda and emily dressed up for a halloween party they were invited to this evening. i really love their costumes. somehow i've managed to keep the little black cat hat with its pink ears all these years (you can see chanda as a child in this hat in one of this blog's side photos on the left).

she said she wasn't smiling in the old photograph; i said she was . . and she does have a little smile . . i made her smile for another photo that i took, but it didn't come out as well, so this wistful one is here instead . .