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?"
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 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.
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.
