Next trip was an East Coast special: two weeks filled with the sights and sounds of New York City, the hospitality of the Singer household, meeting up with some of BSW Wealth Partners’ outside managers, attending Michael’s graduation and then heading back to the city with him to scout out an apartment. Lucky for me, I was able to wangle a couple nights at a corporate apartment and lure my siblings to the upper east side for a couple days of fun, sightseeing and, of course, shopping (awesome shoe store on each corner from our digs!). We walked the streets, ate at our old favorites (but unfortunately didn’t find any new ones), shopped (which often gave me the opportunity to chat on the curb with Lee), visited the planetarium and stayed busy up until Lee and Betsy had to leave for the train station in the pounding rain. At which point, we all witnessed how much Stacey has become a New Yorker: standing on the corner in her red riding hood long raincoat hailing a taxi, and when some ballsy New Yorker decides to try and heist the cab, she gives him a tongue lashing that sends him scurrying down the sidewalk! We get a good laugh out of that as we turn into drenched rats walking to the Met to check out the special exhibit: American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection. Not only did they trace the history of fashion in the US, and how it echoed social conditions for women, it finally answered for me the question of how the body ideal evolved to be one of unreasonable thinness. Thanks goes to the French man whose name I’ve forgotten, who decided to favor the “American Diana” over the “French Venus” body type. I think it’s time to move in the other direction!