I know it’s been months.

I guess I’ve just been overwhelmed by life, and swamped with work and family stuff. The usual excuses.

The holidays have been hectic and not all that easy to deal with. I’ve been trying hard to come up with things to do that are so different that my mother won’t feel the loss of my father so deeply.

For Thanksgiving my mother, brother and I went to New York City. My mother had always wanted to see the Macy’s Parade, so that seemed like a good plan.

In some ways it was, in others it wasn’t.

There were two things that ended up being negative for me… one was that she insisted on taking the train all the way. She wouldn’t let me drive to New Haven and then take the commuter line, which is generally about a four-hour trip. No we had to take the Amtrak, which was crowded and miserable and took six hours.

I didn’t whine though.

By the time we got to NYC my mother had decided that the train was a mistake. Of course we still had to take it to get home.

The other problem was the weather. It suddenly turned bitterly cold and windy. It had been in the sixties up until the Sunday before Thanksgiving, but it went rapidly downhill and it was really, really cold.

This is really hard for my mother to take. She's on medicine that thins her blood, so she’s cold all the time. This was not a good thing.

We stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel on 48th and Park and it was lovely. It was quite elegant and a step waaaay above the types of places I usually stay when I’m in the city.

When we finally got there on Wednesday we tried to go to Mars 2112 for dinner, but there was an hour and a half wait. Instead we went across the street to Ellen’s Stardust Diner, which has singing waiters and waitresses. I’d been there before, but felt as if it had gone downhill. It just seemed far too chaotic and the food was only so-so.

The reason I chose that place was because it was right around the corner from the theater we were going to. I’d gotten tickets last summer to see "The Music Man". I knew my mother would love it.

It didn’t make any difference to me that I had already seen it, because I had loved it. This trip was really about making things nice for my mother anyway.

My mother loved the show and our seats were great. I was glad that I was successful in that choice.

We took lots of cabs in order to get my mother from place to place – she has a tough time walking.

We got up bright and early on Thursday morning to go out and stake a place at the parade route.

It was a big 23 degrees out.

I now have a new respect for popsicles and other frozen foods having withstood the rigors of the Macy's Parade. Man it was cold!!!

We found a spot at the corner of 51st and 7th that at 8:15 seemed perfect. There was one group of people sitting on the curb (over the subway grating - smart) and another group in chairs behind them, so we plunked our chairs behind them, figuring we'd all be able to see. (Yes, I dragged three chairs - and blankets - with me from home). Then other folks came and stood behind us, forming a sort of wind barrier. It was far from cozy, but seemed bearable. Five minutes before the parade arrived the morons in front stood up! This of course killed our plan of sitting. I still can't figure out why they needed to stand, the view was so much better sitting.

I did enjoy the parade, in spite of the cold. I did spend a good deal of my time checking on my mother making sure she was ok. She eventually had to go into Starbucks to warm up.

The big balloons are so neat, though. They were much lower in the sky than I thought they’d be, but I think that might have been to control them better in wind gusts.

I also got a great deal of satisfaction booing the Yankees when their float went by. Many of the people in our area joined in, but Michael told me that they were probably Mets fans.

After the parade we stopped at the Michaelangelo to warm up, then toddled off to find a cab. We got back to the hotel and thought we’d have lunch. They had a brunch going for $56 per person.

I don’t think so!

Then we thought that we’d check out room service.

$28 for soup, a meatloaf sandwich and a coke.

Nope.

So I ventured out into the cold, found a deli around the corner from the hotel and brought sandwiches back to the room.

I had also discovered that some shows were up and running that night, which surprised me, as the ones I had checked on when I was there in August were all dark. So I told my mother that I was going to go up to Times Square to the TKTS booth and see what I could get.

She told me I couldn’t go out in the cold.

I asked her who was going to stop me.

So off I went.

She also insisted that I take cabs to get there and back. It was a five-block walk. It is a well-known fact that I love to walk in NYC, so I walked.

Of course, one of the reasons that she wanted me to take cabs was that I had done something to my back on Saturday, (God know what, I stood up from a chair and was in agony.) so I was in agony. But walking seemed to make it feel better, so I kept walking.

I stood on line and met some interesting people, we all froze together. Standing in one place really made my back ache. But I got tickets for "Annie Get Your Gun"(which I had seen a year ago). This time the cast was Cheryl Ladd and Patrick Cassidy. He was gorgeous. She was good, but having seen Bernadette Peters in the role, there was no way she could ever meet that standard.

I went back to the hotel and we got dressed for dinner then went to Sardi’s. The meal was wonderful.

It was $42 per person, and we all opted for Prime Rib rather than turkey. We had a shrimp and corn chowder as an appetizer, a salad, then had dessert afterwards. I had key lime pie.

We all enjoyed the meal. I was glad I’d chosen Sardi’s. The other good thing was that the theater was only a block away, so it was easy to get to.

Friday morning we went to a deli at Rockefeller Center for breakfast, shopped at the NBC store, went to Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral (we had gone to light a candle for my father and they were about to have Mass, and my mother wanted to stay), then went shopping at Saks.

I didn’t buy much, just a sequin box of a NYC taxi to thank Dee for taking care of the boys while I was away.

We went back to the hotel, got all our stuff together and took off for Penn Station to get the train home.

This was another long and miserable ride. Not because the train was crowded, but because there was a mother who spent all her time SCREAMING at her four children (using all manner of obscenities and threats). This did nothing to stop the children from running up and down the aisles and screaming and hollering.

I complained to a conductor, but that didn’t do any good. Finally five hours into this my brother, who barely says boo, stood up and yelled at them all.

We had an hour of peace until we had to get off the train.

Generally, though, it was a good trip. I know my mother had a nice time and that was all that mattered.

So now I’m in my usual pre Christmas chaos, but I’ll have to save that for another time.

The goal for today is to finish cleaning my bedroom, organizing the dresser drawers and putting away the summer clothes.

A daunting task that I’ve been dealing with for over a week.