Drug tip of the day: if you’ve run out of places to keep your stash of cocaine, just look to one of your handy kitchen appliances!  Mr. Coffee will be happy to hold a few grams of the white stuff instead of boring old brown grounds! 

Aah…I have been careening toward this glass of red sitting next to me all day.  And as I prepared to type (on his computer–we must be getting serious) that all that’s missing is the BF, he walked in and rendered that comment wonderfully unnecessary.  So now we wait in our own ways for our pizza to cook: I write, he reads.  Perfect.

As I read beautiful, poetic books in a mundane, sparse setting this week, I’ve felt a sense of inspiration beyond what jury duty typically evokes or deserves.  Along with that has come a sentimentality bred from the temporary nature of my new assignment and acquaintances.  I don’t doubt that were I to discover that jury duty was a permanent sentence, I’d feel for it the same feelings I have when I approach the workplace.  Frustration, irritation, and exhaustion, to name a few.  (And no, not every day…but such is the nature of the word work.  A nature and perspective I’m asking God to change.)  But since Monday is my last day, I find myself valuing encounters that I may not notice otherwise.  And wondering things like how B. and R. and I will say goodbye: an exchange of hugs, business cards, or nothing? 

I’m feeling the same sentimentality approach me about leaving the city.  I say approach because I know it hasn’t hit me full-on yet.  If it had (and when it does) I’ll be a mess.  That’s how goodbyes work.  I already said one, this past weekend, to PG.  Our first close friend to leave the city.  This year will have several of us doing that, and it’s coming as surely as the tide.  Every time I head over to the BF’s now, I haul a stack of books from my apartment and deposit them in a corner of his.  This is a slow move in preparation for the two-month period between the time my lease expires (hallelujah!) and his does, when I will be camping out in sin at his place before we leapfrog to an apartment in Atlanta before we finally land (hopefully–plans in pencil, of course) at our first real home.  A real house, with a yard and everything!

But until then…we have New York.  And it has us.  And our pending move has already led to a “Bucket List” of things we want to do around here before we leave.  From the small (eat large quantities of bacon-wrapped, almond stuffed dates at Sala) to the large (we’re headed to Niagara in a few weeks).  Already I feel the wavelets of emotion hit from time to time: how will I feel when I walk out my front door at 9 pm (will I ever?) and don’t breathe in the scent of pad thai?  Will my new drycleaner know my name?  Will I gain weight from not walking everywhere?  Will I run out of things to write about?  Will my kids like me?  (I tend to jump ahead a little in moments of emotional upheaval.) 

And there is the idea of saying goodbye to the city that changed my life; that reintroduced me to God; that introduced me to my best friend and husband (miraculously, as I had always hoped, the same person).  There is no way to prepare for this. 

Then I remember the day I moved here.  The U-Haul with three of us stuffed up front, my possessions stuffed in the back, and the way I felt: like my heart was breaking, even though I knew I was headed in the right direction.  And so I will be in a few months.  This is the faith I have.  And it lasts longer than goodbyes.