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FREE AT LAST: Two mothers of toddlers, liberated for 24 blissful hours from cleaning up spilled juice and soggy Cheerios, luxuriate in the 80-degree pool on the 27th floor of the U.N. Plaza-Park Hyatt Hotel just across from the United Nations.
The sun streams in floor-to-ceiling windows with spectacular wraparound views of the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge and downtown Manhattan. As the sun sets behind the Empire State Building, the sky turns orange, then purple and then black. Manhattan's skyline lights up with the promise of an evening of glitz and glamor for me and my friend, Alice.
We didn't want to get away from our dear husbands, you understand, or from our adorable 2-year-old sons. We just needed a break from holiday preparations, the parade of dirty dishes and the middle-of-the-night cries of: "Scary dream! Hold hand!" We were both dead tired: I was eight months pregnant with my second child; Alice was burned out from a semester teaching high school.
We wanted to go away for the weekend, but we didn't have the energy to go anywhere. The Catskills, New England...