Bad Manners and Brimstone

I remember when my first was a couple of months old my husband and I took him to a nice-ish restaurant with us.  Of course, he had a 20 minute crying fit before he fell asleep.  I remember seeing people muttering and giving us dirty looks and thinking, "HOW RUDE!!!"

Now, of course, I shudder whenever I think about that incident and wish I could track down all those people and buy them a nice, quiet dinner.

You're not hijacking at all!  I am really interested in how other New Yorkers (or, in my and my family's case - Ex-New Yorkers    ) are handling everything!

Wouldn't it have been easier to just answer the door the first time and tell them you're not interested?  Then you wouldn't have them coming back several times.  One minute of talking would have saved you stress over a longer period of time.

LOL, your daughter is absolutely on the mark! 

Many years ago when I was working for an investment bank in London, I found the most wonder Chanel sheath dress at a thrift shop.  It looked good as new and fit me perfectly, so I thought the planets had just aligned.  Then...I looked at the price tag.  It was £500.  Yikes!  I knew that to get this dress in a boutique would cost several thousand (well not, THAT dress in particular.  I think it must've been a few seasons behind) and I wanted it so much but £500 was a heck of a lot of money at the time.

So, I figured out that if I went for a month and a half or so of not going out with friends, limiting takeaway, keeping to a strict budget, I would...barely...swing it.  So I took it home with me!  Woo woo!

It was raining the next morning but not very cool so I slipped on a cardigan over my beautiful wonderful Chanel dress.  And when I was waiting to cross the street, a bus came past and splashed me with muddy water!  When I got to work, I tried to blot it with damp towels but it didn't help.  After work, I put on the gym clothes I kept in my office and dropped the poor dress off at the dry cleaners.  When I got it back a few days later, the proprietor said he had tried so hard to remove the stain but there was still an "outline" of gray from the hem to about 8 inches up the dress.  Not good since the background of the dress was cream colored.

I was so sad that I couldn't even look at it so I threw it in a trash can on the way back to my flat.  And I still had to do those 6 weeks of abstention without my Chanel to show for it. 

What I was saying in my longwinded way was that OP has every right to ask for at least what she paid for the blouse.  In a perfect would, she could ask for the cost of replacing it but that might be prohibitive.  What would also influence my decision is how dog lady acted when poor OP was mugged.

Hi everyone!  I've been AWOL for quite some time and have enjoyed spending the last few days catching up with everyone's posts.  It's an indulgence for me to sit down with a cup of coffee and see what's going on in the BM&B world!

I was wondering how, in particular, the New Yorkers in the group are faring with COVID and all the other upheaval?  Are you staying? Going? Undecided?  I'm curious about what everyone is doing to try to keep things normal!

We left NYC for another house we're fortunate to have back in March.  We're currently in the middle of closing in a place in Boston, which hasn't been as affected by everything. I wanted to wait for awhile and see how things unfolded in NYC, but my husband was adamant that we just needed to get out of there so we put our place on the market. There's a lot of interest in it, so that proves my point that not everyone is so ready to give up on NYC, but that fell on deaf ears.

I hope everyone is doing well, or as well as they can in this crazy point in time!

Maybe she made you that offer because she was worried you would see it for sale online and she wanted to give you a heads up to get it back if you wanted to?

I'm glad things worked out for your family and your nanny. I was a bit worried that your neighbour was going to poach your nanny from under your nose by offering her a higher rate or something.

Oh my goodness, nanny poaching on the UES is right up there with Avada Kedavra, Crucio and Imperio: unforegivable!  At least that's what my friends have told me.  I'm not to the manor born so I swear I'm still learning to navigate!