Margret Sloan

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve loved New York City. We went on several trips to New York while in school. I’ll never forget the 8th grade trip to Manhattan. We boards large commercial buses at 3:00 in the morning and slept during most of the drive up, spent the entire day doing tourist things and drove back the same night. IT was exhausting but thrilling and I jumped at every chance after that to go to New York for another visit.

Most of my friends that left the medspa company have accepted positions with a new franchise that is based in New York. Sadly, that means most of them have had to pack up and move from here to New York. So now I don’t have the chance for the occasional lunch or cocktails to stay in touch with most of my friends. It’s down to a few emails and occasional phone calls.

Alexa is the last of the old crew to take a job with the new company. We had lunch today at our favorite Sushi place to say goodbye. She is excited about the move and I’m thrilled for her! She’s going to stay with one of our friends already there, sleeping on the futon while she looks for place of her own. To help with that I put her in touch with one of the best real estate agents in Manhattan, Dottie Herman.

Dottie is a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, the largest real estate company in New York. I had met Dottie years ago at a real estate function in Las Vegas and kept her business card just in case I would have the opportunity to move to New York. Alas, it is Alexa who is getting that opportunity and I’m happy to share the contact information with her.

I don’t know who the others used to help them find a new home, but if I was looking for Manhattan New York real estate I would call Dottie first. As soon as Alexa finds her new condo and gets settled in, I’ll be flying to New York for a visit with my old buddies.

OK - I’m willing to admit that we cheated a little on the tomato plants this year. We bought two plants at the Publix grocery store when they had some seasonal plants out front of the store. Each plant was only $12 and they both looked very healthy, so we brought them home and had a nice head start on tomatoes this year.

My goal has always been to have fresh homegrown tomatoes on the vine ready to pick by the Fourth of July each summer. Well, believe it or not, we’ve been picking ripe tomatoes for two weeks already! They are not really big tomatoes, but they are sweet and meaty and we are very pleased with ourselves!

Maybe this abundance of fresh tomatoes will encourage hubby to eat more fresh garden salads this summer. He eats them in restaurants when salad comes with the meal - no cucumbers, no fancy lettuce - just iceburg - ranch dressing is the only dressing choice - but salads at home are always disdained. If I was a completely confident cook I’d be offended, but it’s not me - it’s him.

Condo life sometimes means putting up with little nuisances that you might not have to deal with in a single family home with a yard and good distance between neighbors.

Even though this condo development is upscale and the construction is high end, there can still be nights where the noise from your neighbor’s TV or sound system creeps into your bedroom and makes sleep difficult. I don’t have a garage band next door, but for some reason the neighbors like to listen to rock and roll ALL night. Now, I like rock and roll, but not at 3:00 in the morning when I’m trying to sleep.

So we’ve come up with a solution other than calling the police and filing noise complaints against the neighbors. We bought a little machine called Sleep Mate, which makes a nice little sound during the night called white noise and you don’t have to listen to that rock and roll or even hubby’s snoring anymore. I’ve known about White Noise Machines for years, but it wasn’t until we moved here that I needed it.

And to take the chill off in the morning, I bought a pair of foot cozy heated slippers from Vat 19 - the same site that sells the Sleep Mate. A good night’s sleep is a whole lot easier now, and getting up in the morning is just a little nicer, too.

This morning’s newspaper came with a nice surprise - two free boxes of breakfast cereal were in the special plastic bag that holds the paper. There was a small box of Honey Nut Cheerios and a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, along with coupons to save 75 cents at the grocery store on a full size box if you like the cereals.

It is always nice to get something free to try - it surely must open the minds of a good percentage of people who might not otherwise try a particular food or drink but soon discover that they actually like the product. Part of this is due to favoring brands or flavor with which you grew up or are accustomed to eating and drinking. Part of it is due to a natural resistance to try new things without some incentive. And part of it, in my household anyway, is that the person doing the grocery shopping is a creature of habit and only searches out the brands and items that we know we like or prefer so they can get finished with the chore of shopping and get back home as quickly as possible.

Our grandson was here over the weekend. His mom dropped him off Saturday morning and we got to spend the whole day together. He usually goes to bed pretty early at home and I like to keep him on the same sleep schedule although not on the same routine.

At home he usually falls asleep watching TV and his mom moves him to his bed and leaves his clothes on him, then in the morning he gets a bath in a big hurry because he has to leave for school.

At my house (my rules!) he takes a bath after dinner and puts on pajamas, then he is allowed to watch TV or a movie and then he puts himself to bed. I tuck in the covers and say, “Sleep tight - don’t let the bedbugs bite!”

Well, I’ve always said that because my parents always said that and their parents always said that. We’ve never had to worry about bedbugs - it was just a cute rhyme that we said out of love. But what do you do if you really do have to worry about letting the bedbugs bite? Well, there is a web site that can help people with that: bedbugsguide.com and I found it while surfing the internet with my grandson, because he asked what bedbugs look like.

So if you have a problem with bedbugs where you live, check out this site for how to kill bedbugs and soon you will be able to “sleep tight” again.