If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?

Guess what.

There are girls younger than us.  I know it's shocking isn't it?  Downright horrible, I think.  I didn't even realize it until recently.  Until my friends started turning 25 and then I realized in a few months I, too, will be a step closer to 30.  No, I don't think 30 equals death.  However, I can't say I'm looking forward to the actual number 30 itself.  Thirty doesn't have the same ring as say 21 or 27.  You don't often hear people talking in hushed tones about a younger woman who is "30."  I'm not saying I want to be a tart, but I do want to be of an age where it would still sound scandalous if I was.

OK so 24 is not old.  Neither is 30.  I'm pretty sure I will like life as much at 30 as I do now, if not more so.  But it's just one of those little things that squeaks in the back of your mind.  "Ugh, I actually have to age?!  This is crap!"  Then I go on about my happy life and am thankful for all the sweet ass things that happen every day. 

But isn't there ever a time when you see some 21-year-old looking like she rolled in mud aka tanning bed and she's looking all tarty and fresh and you just want to slap the hoops out of her ears (or if you're here, smash her in the side with the fatty LV bag she's carrying)?  Oh, I know it's bitter and a mildly violent thought, but I'm just saying what everyone is thinking. 

BUT THEN....I remember that I am younger than someone else and that someone else probably wants to pull my little shorts over my head.  Fair is fair.

Besides, I am the youngest today that I am ever going to be.  Might as well enjoy it.  You, too, 21 year old. 

Flights of Faith

I think a great deal of the anxiety-prone population pray at their peak prayer-ness while in airplanes. All of us doom-dwellers are thinking "Oh God, please don't let me freak out before the flight." "Why in God's name must this thing go so fast to lift off?!" "Dear God how did I convince myself I would be fine floating in a big chunk of aluminum?" "Please God, don't let the turbulence make me fall out of the sky to my untimely, and unwanted, death!"

Praying this much either makes me an idiot or an arrogant ass. Probably both.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in God 365 days a year (plus 1 on leap years), but I think I am a fervent believer in religion once I get a few miles up into the sky. It's almost as bad as praying for your basketball team to win the championship game or begging God to change the red light to green when you're late to an interview.

I can only temper the outrageous act of asking God to intervene at my convenience by saying that if I have learned one thing from 12 year of Catholic school, it is that we can turn to God when we can't turn to anyone else. When fear of death and whatever you are afraid of is at your door, where else can you go? I honestly can't help but to pray. I even started thinking of turbulence as angels bumping the plane to be funny. Ha-ha angels. You're hysterical...I'd beat you with your own wing if you weren't supposedly safeguarding me from harm.

If you can't tell, I have to fly soon. And I have to fly alone. Double whammy. I know it's safe, I know I will be fine, but I can tell you that for about six total hours over the next few weeks, I will be trying not to vom, praying my guts out and threatening those fat angels who keep bumping my little tin rocket around.

And then one weekend...

And then one weekend in New York, it was absolutely, positively, perfectly warm. Warm in the sun, a little sweaty if you walked fast enough, and just cool enough in the shade of buildings. Which means...flowers.

And where there is good light, there are really sweet iPhone pictures.

The wares of Union Square

Here is the assortment of things you can find at the Union Square Market. Pictures, ripped off prints and dominatrix covers. I vote dominatrix. No?

Defrost of CP

And just a few days later, the snow just melted away, and Central Park looked clean and pretty again. This is the memorial to John Lennon, and the view from Strawberry Fields. Does it blow anyone else's mind that you see beautiful ginormous building while surrounded by trees and open land? Well, it drives me absolutely wild... in a fabulous way.

The Real Deal Blizzard of 2010

This what Central Park looks like after at least a foot and a half of snow... No, this was not in the last week, but it's still pretty damn awesome. So you'll look and you'll like it! I kid. I kid.

I've been holding out on you

I started seeing projects called "365" or "1 picture a day for a year" on flickr. The idea, I bet you already know, is to take a picture every day for a year. Brilliant, except I'm pretty sure 95% of people either miss a day or forget after a while.

Not gonna lie, I would probably fall in that 95%. Nonetheless, I have taken pictures like a mad person with my iPhone recently. And while there's probably zero reason for you to care what it is that I'm seeing, it's probably a tad more interesting since it's in New York. Or maybe you are my Mom and Dad. Then you probably care :)

So here's a roundup of the last week up here. I'll put all my pictures in separate posts. Some of them require some of my eloquent explanation *scoff* and some of them don't, but it's my blog so I'm going to caption the hell of it. Shocker.

I'm sorry. Did you say adventurous?

Since I have decided to stay in Hoboken I have:

Eaten spaghetti for the first time
Eaten crab for the first time
Eaten lobster for the first time - I even cracked the shell!
Eaten oysters (Oysters, people!) for the first time
Slept on someone's couch for a period longer than four hours
Listened to three live (music) shows
Walked around in Central Park during normal work hours
Grown accustomed to coffee without any sort of hot chocolate mix
Learned to like doing the dishes
Done my laundry in an actual laundromat
Crammed myself into a subway car against all odds and enjoyed it, even a guy's elbow in my face and with every body part touching someone else's despite my best efforts to shrink in size
Enjoyed Hoboken's St. Patty's Parade Day i.e. started drinking at 10 a.m. wearing green shamrock glasses
Saw, in a person, a sex doll for dogs
Witnessed a rock concert performed by sweet has-beens in a church where they served wine and cupcakes for free
Waitressed for the first, second and third time in my life

Woke up in the morning without fretting about every day ahead of me and instead actually living in the moment. I can honestly say I know what "living in the moment" means now. Before I quit my job and moved onto Apartment 8 couch, I had no idea. It always sounded nice and adventurous, but I just couldn't grasp it. But from the moment I put my suitcases down in my saintly friends' apartment, I knew I could not let my mind run me into the ground with all the what-if's and how-will-I's. So whenever I felt a little panic stricken, I just had to remind myself of where I was and what I was doing.
Example:
"Oh God, you are totally throwing away some good jobs you might have had in Kentucky. What if you don't find anything here? What if you can't do anything?!"
Correction: "Gosh, this shower is nice. I like how my conditioner smells. Coco de Creme - so clever. Where's my shaving cream? Is this tub lopsided or is one of my legs shorter than the other?"

Transition

December - Katie wants to go home to Kentucky

January - Yeah, Katie sorta wants to go home to Kentucky, but ya know maybe not

February - Katie is considering super gluing her butt to her and Deana's apartment floor. And yet, she keeps packing up and making plans to move. Blizzard of the century arrives.

February 27th, 5 a.m. - Katie wakes up Mom to tell her she has decided to stay in New York, sans apartment, clothes, money, job.

February 27th, 5:03 a.m. - Katie's Mom and Dad have another exercise in patience and understanding. Katie's Mom drives home to Kentucky minus daughter.

February 27th, 8:45 a.m. - Friends step in to keep Katie from being homeless and penniless.

Cheese Please

Today I actually googled "how to buy cheese." I know that little about delis, and fresh cheese and meat. I am from Kentucky, land of Kroger's and Ameristops and KFC. Not the farm Kentucky where I make my own cheese and butcher my own meat.

Lucky for me, Fiore (famous for their freshly made Mozarella aka Mutz apparently) employs the loveliest Italian New Jersians alive. I walked out with a half a pound of Mutz that was made fifteen minutes ago, a quarter pound of ham and a quarter of prosciutto (another thing I had never known existed until I moved to New York).

Feeling finely accomplished and friendly towards deli men, I continued on my grocery quest through another three little stores for the rest of the afternoon.

And this event today is what makes me think I will really miss parts of New York.