Gizmo

We're literally stuffing Sylvie with an early dinner... chicken fingers, fries, sliced avocado, cheese, egg wrap, hummus & baba ghanoush. Washing it down with Chai protein drink cut with skim milk. NO FOOD OR WATER AFTER MIDNIGHT. Sylvie's watching Aladdin right now, mesmerized. My aunt Sharon gave it to her for her birthday and Sylvie has already watched it about 10 times. In a few minutes, we're hopefully cruising over to Van Dyke's for ice cream with Andy, Sammy and Bella. My parents are coming over at 6:30 so that Michael and I can run to the Ridgewood Community Gardens kick-off meeting. I hope no one brings up that our garden was an unruly mess of tomatoes, basil and weeds last year or that Lucky came with us a few times.

Tomorrow morning, we have to be at pre-op no later than 8 am although they said there is a chance of even earlier. Sylvie's surgery is scheduled for 10:30 am and is supposed to be around 4 hours with the two chiefs of surgery working side by side. We'll be in the orange waiting area all day followed by Pediatric Intensive Care Unit for at least 4 days (PICU for short).

Michael is on the front page of Forbes.com today for the launch of a new program called "America's Promising Companies" featuring world-famous entrepreneurs and small business owners. Michael and John Catsimatidis, who is the owner, president, chairman, and CEO of the Red Apple Group and Gristedes Foods (and NYC mayoral candidate) have a "round table" conversation shot on location in our dear friend's apartment right around the corner from Commodities Natural Market. Anyway, check it out at . Expect more clips of it to run in the future. Michael had a great time participating and meeting John however next time he's bringing with him our dear friend and celebrity make-up artist Kevin Posey to powder his nose :-) in exchange for tofu.

Ironically Kevin and I were Facebooking today and I have him on hold to do all of our make up for Sylvie's Bat Mitzvah in 2019.

Last night, we had a few friends and family over to celebrate Sylvie's birthday with a spectacular cake made by Amy Micelli from Ciao For Now in the East Village. I will try to upload a photograph later. Sylvie had a ball. I have an inconsistent habit of writing on match books, date/time/info, and noticed that the one Michael used to light the candles on Sylvie's cake were from a defunct supper club on Ludlow Street called Torch and on the matchbook, I had written: "8/13/01 Five For Fighting media showcase" just when the song "Superman" was taking on a life of it's own. Not to sound corny but my favorite songs continue to take on new meanings, even 8 years later, so it's a little ironic for me.

I don't want to make light of tomorrow-- I'm sure we'll be sitting in silence staring at our fingernails when we're not biting them.

Thanks to everyone for their well-wishes, misheberachs, prayers, prayer circles, healers in far away places, candle-lighting, meditating, fasting, giving up coffee for Lent, Spaghetti for long life!, training for Strides for Sylvie, blood + platelets and of course, modern medicine. Tomorrow is a BIG day for us all.