New York City, NYC, pretty mean when it wants to be...

it was a cold and blurry trip.

squeezed a lot in. but MAN was it windy. i felt like the animated Addams Family in an episode of the Flintstones, where the weather just seemed to follow them everywhere they went.

here I am posing near little brother's place on the upper upper west side, George Washington Bridge behind me.

some highlights? art museums, touring our nations history in Philadelphia, FOOOOD, the Strand bookstore, and the girl on the subway.

Ryan and I were headed home for the night on the A train, stuffed full of assorted cakes and ethnic meals and windblown beyond recognition. I glanced over to my brother sitting on my left and caught wind of a knitting project a few seats over, across the way. Knitting always catches my eye because I don't know how some knitters and crocheters can detail such intricacies on mass transit.

I looked up from the piece she was knitting and looked at the woman. I had to try and restrain myself with giggles. At least in the beginning. She was wearing a hat, that she obviously knit. It was complete with cat ears on the top. She was a tall and lanky figure, sitting with her legs twisted and intertwined with each other yet stretching into two seats. She had a pointy chin, thick glasses, and was holding her knitting needles about two inches from her eyes with a strange smirk on her face. Her handbag also had a cat's face crocheted on its front flap, resting on her sprawling pose.

I kept peeking back over to her to catch a better glimpse of her project, until my little brother caught me mid-turning-of-the-head and did a knowing gesture with his eyebrows and I just LOST IT!

It was at that moment I realised she was knitting a sweater for her CAT! I bursted out in laughter so hard and bellyaching and it wouldn't stop!

I quieted down after about a minute straight and breathed deeply.

Then I glanced back over and it started up again, this time lasting about 5 subway stops.

I just laughed and laughed and laughed until I was lightheaded and dizzy and I'd have to catch my breath.

Colombus Circle, expressing past the Central Park stops, 168th...the laughter just kept coming and coming and coming and I couldn't stop myself!

I thought the paramedics were gonna have to come and rescue me from asphyxiation!

I couldn't look at her.

So many character developments were racing through my mind.

She was like a character Kristen Wiig would have created on SNL.

She was the epitome of what happens when you live alone in a big city for much too long.

I was envisioning her having tea parties with her cats in a one-room Washington Heights studio apartment.

All I wish is that I would have been able to control my laughter long enough to snap a shot of her. I hadn't laughed like that in I-can't-even-remember-how-long-ago.