Art?

I used to wonder if Tom didn't have a tiny bit of guilt that I was still up washing dishes and doing laundry long after he'd retired to the couch to play "Trade Nations" or watch TV. Now that I have Cheryl, I know the answer is no. Of course, Cheryl is paid to do all that and I'm not, but here I sit typing away while she scrubs the kitchen after making yet another amazing meal and I don't have an ounce of guilt.

All to say that I got to do lots of stuff today because once again Cheryl did all the mommy/wife stuff I hate: she picked the kids up from school, did the laundry and ironing, cleaned the house, bought a few groceries and made dinner. I love her.

What did I do with my time? Well, after EASILY (read "no tears!") dropped off the kids, Wendy the realtor picked me up at school and shuttled me off to see three apartments. All of these apartments were smack dab in the middle of town, just off Orchard and on the all important last bus stop before heading up to the Singapore American School - a school Maisie probably won't get into anyway.

The first place was called 6 Claymore Hill which is a very old building for here - maybe 40 years. The first floor is an HSBC bank. The elevator is ugly and there are no facilities...oh, but the apartment is fabulous! 4500 square feet of beauty. The living room is massive and there's an en suite guest room on the first floor. The kitchen is completely new with not one, but two side-by-side refrigerators IN the kitchen! We don't even have that in the States! The helper's room is a real room where say somebody my size could sleep. Yup, there's room for more than a toddler bed! Upstairs, there are four bedrooms and a landing that could be used as an office or TV space. What's the problem? Well, the view absolutely sucks. The entire living room faces a very, very ugly parking garage. The saving grace besides the size is that the building is literally next door to The American Club so while there are no facilities, there is access to the city and the club which is the fanciest of the private clubs here - for hefty membership, of course!

The next apartment is called The Claymore, a newer building with full amenities and quite nicely landscaped. This 2680 square foot apartment was very nice, but there are only three bedrooms. I really think we need four. The kitchen here was pretty neat - blue wood.

The last apartment was The Tate Residences, also a 3 bedroom, but only 1984 square feet. It was very shiny and sleek, but far too small. The nice thing? It is literally next door to the Eton House preschool.

So.... I'm definitely getting a feel for what is here. What to do about it is still confusing. I'll admit - there are plenty of nights I look through the listings back in Westchester, too.

After apartment hunting, I did something pretty cool: I painted a painting. In the States, particularly in the South, getting together with your girlfriends and painting is all the rage. Some smart soul opened up a similar place here called ArTEAstique! I went with a bunch of Exxon ladies courtesy of an invite from Connie and Heather. We got there and started to paint - whatever we wanted. Uh, hello? I thought there was going to be an instructor there. I wanted to paint something to remind me of Singapore so I found a very cool painting of shophouses and tried to replicate it. See, it's cool. 

Mine, not so cool. Okay - let's face it- I suck. I'm SO creative, but I just cannot paint for the life of me. Maybe I should just buy the real thing. Oh well.. it was still lots of fun. Connie liked my shophouse idea so much that she did shophouses, too, but hers were good.  

I should have done blue lines on a canvas like Heather! She thought Mason might like it in his room. Brilliant!

I saw Heather and Connie later, too. We all went to Joy's to celebrate Andrew's third birthday. The kids had such a good time. Hudson was thrilled because Andrew has a MILLION cars and trucks. My little man literally holed himself up in the playroom playing with toys while the other kids were eating cake in the other room. They'll both be so happy to get back to Chappaqua and their toys.