When I was young, I used to dream about having a garden where there would be multiple sections: one section would have all my roses, another section would have all my bulbed perennials (lilies, tulips, and the like), and a last small section would have little herbs and vegetables. Sprinkled throughout the garden would be fruit trees. I had no idea where this imaginary garden would be in the world, but that was my little gardening fantasy.

Well, fast forward several decades later, and here I am in New York City, with no front or backyard. The two living plants that are in our apartment are on the window sill in the kitchen. One is a spider plant that had been propagated from a friend’s fruitful spider plant. The second plant is an aloe vera that was gifted to us as part of a gift package when Kaia was born. And now, we have two more plants: two tiny succulents that came as part of a do-it-yourself terrarium set that my manager designated a virtual team building event today!

I will admit: I was a little happy to do this activity even though we were all virtual. It’s fun to do things that require a certain level of creativity, even if we are not all together in the same physical space. and the end product does look quite attractive. I have it displayed now on the window sill in the second bedroom by Kaia’s bed. The plants I actually do have today are a far cry from the vision I had as a child, but they do still make me happy and bring extra life and brightness into the apartment.

The age-old debate in Facebook and Reddit mother and parenting groups continues: which is better: daycare or nanny? In general, I’m happy we had a nanny until Kaia was at least 12 months. if I had to do it all over again, I probably would have stopped our nanny relationship once we went to Australia in December and started Kaia in daycare in January when we came back. That was the point when not only did our nanny start taking us for granted and let go of a lot of her known responsibilities, but also when I felt like she just wasn’t keeping up with ensuring Kaia was doing age-appropriate, developmental activities. If there is one thing I absolutely do not miss, it’s having to manage a household employee and her constant insolence; it’s a far bigger burden than I ever previously had imagined.

While daycare certainly has its own set of challenges, it’s been nice that whenever I’ve had feedback, I can deliver it to the teachers directly and to the administration, and therefore there is always accountability (this certainly was NOT the case with our nanny). We’ve seen a lot of change since we’ve given feedback at our chosen daycare. But daycare isn’t necessarily always stable, either: our center director quit due to mental health challenges about two weeks ago. It was completely sudden and out of the blue. We really liked her and found her to be really responsive and empathetic. There have been rumors of witchcraft (if you can believe it or not…) amongst the teachers at the school. And just today, the main teacher (there’s a head teacher and an assistant teacher in each classroom) of Kaia’s classroom got fired. She sent a message in the daycare app to all the parents of her students, stating that she had just gotten fired for using her phone yesterday, and she loved us all and was sorry she did not have a chance to say goodbye.

I spoke to the center owner when I went to pick up Kaia late this afternoon. He said that this teacher did not pass her performance review. She had regular behavioral issues, was not fully focused while in the classroom, and had been gossiping about administration staff to the parents and giving one-sided stories that were unfair. Granted, I never really noticed any of this even with camera access to the classrooms, but daycare politics are like any other workplace: he said/she said stories and a bunch of workplace bs. I said I’d take his word for it, but for the most part, since the center director had quit suddenly, we have seen a lot of inconsistency and poor communication from the administration and would prefer more transparency.

Is this a little nuts? Yes. But… Regardless, I still prefer this to having a nanny.

Last year, a friend of mine gave me a referral to sign up for an app called TooGoodToGo. The idea behind the app is that many restaurants and grocery stores have fresh food that is left to go to waste at the end of the day, so instead of throwing it out, they can instead charge customers a small fee to take a “grab bag” of food home. I thought that most grocery stores would donate to shelters and people in need, but I suppose that not every food-related business has the resources to facilitate this type of assistance. Either way, when I reviewed which businesses interested me within a short walking distance of us this time last year, I was dismayed at the small list of options. I did not want to do a grocery store (too big of a grab bag, and I could easily get a bunch of stuff I’d never want to eat, or things filled with artificial colors and flavors), and the restaurants nearby that participated were so generic. So I passed and never used my referral offer, which would have given me one free grab bag.

Well, Chris learned about this app this year, so he downloaded it and got us two “test” grab bags: one was from Morton Williams, a grocery store nearby, and the second was near Breads Bakery, which finally was participating at the location close to us. This is what we got:

Morton Williams: Florida Natural orange juice – 52 oz. container, bag of hard-boiled eggs (6), one container of vanilla yogurt, one 8 oz bag of shredded mozzarella cheese

Breads Bakery (Lincoln Center location): Lemon loaf cake, two sesame bread sticks, one mixed vegetable and sunflower seed salad

The orange juice and the lemon loaf cake made both grab bags “worth it,” but I would never get vanilla yogurt with fake sugar in it (ugh), nor would I ever buy pre-shredded cheese (to keep the shape, the shredded cheese is usually coated with some weird, artificial stabilizer that I do not want to get into here). Chris likes to drink juice, but he doesn’t care for plain orange juice. So while it may occasionally be worth it and you can get lucky, I’d stick with businesses that have a much smaller selection of things you’d like, and NOT do a grab bag from a grocery store again.

The weather forecast looked quite bleak for the weekend. It looks like based on a tropical storm coming in, most of the northeast of the U.S. would be covered in rain. This is never fun for us, as we like to be out and about, going from one place to another in a chosen neighborhood that Chris randomly picks. When we saw the rain, Chris got dragged down and didn’t originally want to go out. I insisted we go out, even if it wasn’t that far: why the hell are we going to let a little drizzle prevent us from going outside? It reminded me of many pathetic people I’ve met who have bailed on social plans simply because of a little rain. So what – your whole life has to stop because of some water coming down from the sky? It’s not like it was hailing or as though sheets of rain were coming down nonstop throughout the day.

So we went out — down to Brooklyn to the DeKalb Market Hall. It looks like a lot of other people had a similar idea to us: the place had lots of people roaming around and sitting to eat. The streets actually had a bit of foot traffic. And before we headed back home, we stopped and sat at Debutea, the same bubble tea spot we visited just last month that makes all their own boba and does everything from scratch. Given the rain, the place had very few people in it, which was nice for us, since it meant that Kaia could more freely roam around and not bother anyone. One cute thing she did was she knocked into someone who was seated and scrolling on her phone, and as soon as she bumped into the chair, she immediately said, “Sorry!” The woman was so engrossed on her phone, though, and barely noticed the bump or the fact that a tiny human apologized. I had never witnessed Kaia proactively apologize for anything she’s done, so it was cute and fun to watch.

Early on in my time in New York City, I realized that I was in a neighborhood (Elmhurst, and next to another one, Woodside!) that had excellent, authentic Thai food — Thai food that wasn’t extra sweetened with sugar or chili-reduced, but was actually true to the flavors of Thailand. The Thai restaurants of Elmhurst and Woodside do not just have the standard pad thai, pad see ew, or tom yum soup dishes (some actually do not have any of these dishes!), but dishes that regional, super spicy, and unforgiving when it comes to whether you have been exposed only to Americanized Thai food or not.

Today, I went to Elmhurst to have lunch with friends who live in Queens, and we met at a spot called Khao Nom, which I had wanted to try for a while. Part of the reason I wanted to check this spot out was due to its extensive takeout selection for Thai desserts. For the longest time, I had no idea what Thai desserts even were outside of sticky rice with mango, but after living in Elmhurst, I realized that Thai desserts overlap so much with what I was exposed to with Vietnamese desserts — lots of coconut, pandan, palm sugar, fresh exotic fruit (jackfruit! Mango!), and lots of rich flavors. Khao Nom has a large counter in the front where they line up all their desserts which you can take to go. Every day, they have anywhere from 8-12 varieties, and when I entered and saw all these lined up in neat rows, I felt like a kid in a candy shop: I had no idea how to even start narrowing down my selection! All I knew was that I couldn’t leave without fewer than three types.

Today, Khao Nom had kanom buang, which I’d seen frequently on Mark Wiens’s food videos in Thailand: Thai crispy, thin pancakes usually filled with coconut, sweet egg yolk, and even dried shrimp. They had pandan cendol, a cold summer soupy dessert with rich coconut milk and pandan. And just in time for Mid-Autumn Moon Festival at the end of this month, Khao Nom had Thai-style mooncakes. They are very flaky and buttery, filled with mashed mung bean or taro, as well as a small salted duck egg yolk. After much deliberation, I ended up choosing three desserts after our delicious lunch: Thai style taro mooncakes, Tokyo pandan (rolled Thai style pancakes filled with pandan custard), and pandan coconut mini jellies. I loved all three of them.

I was thinking about the vast variety of Thai desserts as I left the restaurant, and I thought: yep. That’s how you know if the area where you are has a high concentration of legit X-cuisine: if they have a BAKERY (or multiple, for that matter!) that can give you these types of treats!