despite.

We got back last night from a mini break weekend in New York City.

This morning, I got an email-sentence from K's sister (we stayed with her.):

hope you had a good time despite the energies, my headache, the too-much-mayo sapporo roll, the monsoon, the accidental cream puff, and the worst broadway play you ever saw.

Even despite, I did have a good time.

However - if there is once place in the world that reminds me what an awkward hot mess I actually am, it's New York.

I'm painfully Midwestern in New York.


When I was growing up in a town with the population of one (small) apartment building in the city, I wanted to move to New York when I was an adult. It was a period in my life when I was heavily influenced by Danielle Steel novels and the thought of working my way through the corporate law ladder and divorcing seven husbands somehow at the time seemed appealing.

I was young. Curiously, I now have no interest in neither corporate law nor husbands.

I don't know what I was thinking. In a place that manages to fit nine million different types of people, I don't really fit.

I try, I just stand out. I don't cross the street when the hand is signaling not to walk. I don't own a black coat. I wear sweatpants that are too short for me. In public.

But god, I love the bagels. And the pizza. And the cheesesteak place that lives under the apartment building we stay in and seems to be open all. the. time. Bless you.

New York always reminds me how close we all are and how far away we all are at the same time.

It also reminds me to be thankful for my first floor, large, affordable apartment and for finding a place where I seem to fit, for now.