Catching Up

I'm here! I'm alive! I haven't vanished into the cold, hard streets of New York City and joined a gang/cult/food coop! (although, I am getting dangerously close to joining that last thing..). But man, life has been crazy, I mean CRAZY, these last couple of months. The more that has happened, the more I've wanted to write, but the less time I've had to actually do it! And now I don't even know where to begin. HUmph. I guess this is where this blog really comes full circle. Bird by bird, I just need to force myself to sit down and type-vomit out everything that's going on. I'll try to sort it all out later, but for now I'll take EH's last advice to me when she left NYC and me, standing by our red Harlem gate, "At least take notes." So here you are, some notes.

The other day I met my Theta godmother (the one who gets me great interviews and keeps my spirits up in a vocational kind of way) for dinner in Soho. Because I had a few hours to kill between work and dinner and because my split ends were starting to form one single, snarly dred lock, I popped into a random salon in the Upper East side to get a trim. The short, curly haired Turkish man who cut my hair asked me all about my relationship status and history. And then basically told me that there was something wrong with me. "Still single? No long term relationships? You're 26?!" I would have stiffed him on his tip but he did give me one heck of a head massage and also offered to "take me in the back and rub my neck with oils." I know that sounds creepy, but I was very tempted. Anyway, it was a weird experience and this is a weird story to start out on. Dinner with my godmother was fab, by the way. I felt like pretty woman (minus the whole hooker part).

So I work at a Cancer Hospital now, and that's interesting. On my first day of orientation, we had to go around our group and say what our family and friends' reactions were to hearing where we were hired. It got to me and I said, "Shocked. My people were shocked." The truth is, I was shocked too. When I was killing myself teaching English and student-ing in big scary lit classes in grad school, I did not think that someday I would work in a hospital. If I had known that, I would have been a LOT less stressed about my Medieval Dream Vision Seminar, you know? Anyway, life has this way to steering me in completely absurd directions despite all sense of reason (moving to NYC, anyone??) and then I end up being really happy. Like my fellow Rolling Stones say, "You can't always get what you want (ie teaching job, library job, writing job, etc), but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. Oh-yeaah." I think this job is just what I needed. More on this later.

Downton Abbey. Whoa. I know I'm waaaay late in the game on this one, per usual, but this show is awesome!! When work is especially stressful and I get home late and it's dark and I'm exhausted, laying in bed with Matthew Crowley does for me what Neil Young did for me in grad school. The man keeps me sane.

I SAW ANNE LAMOTT!!! I don't know how on earth I made it this far in this recap without thinking of this massive event in my life, but apparently I think Turkish hairstylists are more memorable. Wrong. I don't feel like I really have it in me to detail the whole experience this late on a Tuesday night, but I'll give you a little teaser: tears, candy corn, the snorting kind of laughter, a lot of middle aged women talking about menopause, me, my bird cell phone cover, snotty kleenexes, and pure joy. Don't worry EH; I definitely took notes about this one. Stay tuned.

My life has been known to have it's share of dry spells of fun: extended periods of time when I have to work all the time or don't have any friends or both. And then other times my life is bursting at the seams with events and friends and parties and so many fun things to do! TOO many fun things to do! This weekend was such a situation... I got to go to The Rockettes Christmas Spectacular with KS and AP for KS's birthday, but I missed a Christmas party at WA and RC's apt. My friends MM and JK came into town Saturday night from D.C. and KS and I met them in Meatpacking for a fun night out in the city. Then the next day I got to go to a Giant's game for FREE!! So yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm starting to sound like a big 'ol brag, but here's the kicker... I missed out on going to Kansas to watch my soul sister marry a really great guy surrounded by close friends and a cake shaped like a stack of books. It literally hurt my heart to be so far away. Literally. I am using the word properly. It's confusing being happy and sad at the same time, and it happens a lot to me here. I wish I could be in two places at once, like the Matrix (disclosure: I've never actually seen the movie but it seems like a fitting reference).

Alright, that's all I've got for tonight, but there is so much more to write about. But then again, isn't there always?