There are few places in the world where I feel happier or closer to God than on the beach.  Any beach, and I have seen a few: Orange Beach, Seaside, Panama City, Delray, Outer Banks, Cape Cod, Newport, Coney Island, the Hamptons, the Jersey Shore, Positano…I should stop.  I’m getting sad.  Anyway, the picture on the left was taken on Malibu beach (or the ‘Bu, if you’re nasty) while the BF and I were there last month.  It’s a slightly disingenuous shot, considering I had to dodge homicidal birds and their poop to take what was meant to convey tranquility and ease, but it’s still worth a thousand words.  No worries, I won’t actually go on for that long.

I just love the beach.

Some of the happiest moments from my childhood occurred at my grandparents’ condo in Perdido Key, Florida.  I remember sitting on the balcony after the sun had gone down and listening to the waves roll against the shore.  I would fall asleep and wake up to that sound and felt wrapped in perfect safety and comfort.  To me, a few minutes spent watching the rhythm of the water afforded me a peace that was reason enough to believe in God.  But then again, I’ve never struggled with believing in Him, so maybe I’m an easy sell.  All I know is that when I’m on any beach, I’m home.

Maybe that’s why I acclimated to this island of Manhattan so quickly.  Although it’s easy to forget that we’re surrounded by water when there are so many inland distractions.  Not to mention the fact that the shores of the East River and the Hudson fall way short of my definition of a beach.  They’re rivers, for one thing. So there are banks, not coastlines.  Another thing is the swimmability factor, and you couldn’t pay me to dip my big toe into their briny waters.  But they are pretty to look at, as most bodies of water are, and they make me feel connected to something bigger, as most bodies of water do.  So they will suffice for now (though the countdown is on!), but in the coming months, I will need more.  In the coming months, I will climb up three flights of stairs, enter my Dante-themed apartment, and shrug off my down jacket, hat, gloves, and scarf.  I will remove my snow boots and whichever sweater dress I am wearing that day.  I will throw myself onto the couch in what my roommate calls my Sprockets outfit, which has become my winter undergarment: black long-sleeved shirt, black leggings, black socks.  And I will close my eyes, breathe deeply, and take myself to one of the aforementioned beaches, if only in my head.  I will hear the surf and feel the sun and thank God that he doesn’t limit me–or Himself–to one home at a time.

I’ve had a relationship with running for over a dozen years, and we have had our share of ups and downs.  I can compare it to my relationship with New York: love, hate, and everything in between, depending on the day.  Both running and New York demand things of me that I didn’t know I could give–they challenge me to be more, often by making me extremely uncomfortable.

One of the benefits of living in New York is constant, free access to Central Park.  I used to run around the reservoir at the north end of the park and felt pretty smug once I could make it around twice–a total of 3.2 miles.  But running has a way of knocking you off your high horse, and that happened when I decided to run the Manhattan half marathon last year and made my first attempt at the outer loop of the park.  Six miles.  Six miles of hills.  And those hills kicked my ass.

Until the first day they didn’t, and I came out the winner.  I remember the elation and accomplishment I felt as I completed the loop, thinking I could do just about anything now that this was under my belt.  Then I stumbled from my high horse as I remembered that the race ahead of me would require over TWO loops around the park.  And any course that includes a stretch known as “Heartbreak Hill” is not joking around.

But I made it and became not just a runner, but a half-marathoner.   Which is helpful to remember on the many days when my running is completely craptastic.  I don’t have to run well every day to be a runner, I just have to show up.  And keep going.  And trust that there’s always a better run ahead.  And a worse one.  And a better one…

Someone found my motherf***ing work pretzels.

I have a sore throat.

Global warming my ass.

Who’s the bitch now, New York?

The dreaded season is upon us here in NYC, and I for one am not off to a great start.  I have serious doubts about whether or not I’ll actually be able to make it through another winter here.  (Wasn’t I just writing about fall?!)  And, if I do, whether or not those around me will.  Because several times today alone, I have felt murder in my heart.  There was the twelve-year-old boy who yelled at the twelve-year-old girl, right as I was walking past and therefore right in my ear, “SLOW DOWN YOU FUCKING RETARD!”  There was the SUV who careened around a corner, cutting me off and *almost* making me spill my morning coffee.  There was the man wearing headphones who walked by me on the street and inexplicably muttered, “White bitch!”  And then, of course, there was the unseen pig who found and ate my work pretzels.

Have you ever been on a vacation so great that for weeks afterward, you use each day of the vacation as a reference point?  As in, two weeks ago today I was doing this.  Or I was watching this.  Well, two weeks ago I was lying here:

And later that day, we went wine tasting here:

And a couple of days before that, we were here, and here:

Oh, California.  Specifically, oh Avila Beach, oh Paso Robles, oh Santa Monica, oh Santa Barbara.  You seem so far away now as I sit in my apartment in wintry New York.  The apartment rendered hot as hell by the recent pipe-altering construction experience, another form of hell.  I sit here as the sky darkens at 6 pm and think of the long months ahead: months of ice and snow and gray.  Months of scarves and gloves and hats.  Months of dry skin and sore throats and swine flu.  I think of this and I want to wrap myself in a blanket and hibernate until May.

BUT!  Then I think of Fifth Avenue lights.  Of Starbucks red holiday cups holding pumpkin spice lattes.  Of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.  Of this:

And that helps a little.  At least enough to make me not want to kill anyone.  But I’m going to need a lot more help than that to get through the next few months.  Sometimes I truly fear the person I can be on a bad day (bad being determined by my parameters).  It makes sense that the prayer I send up most often is, Help me, Lord. Help me get through this winter.  Help me not get sick.  Help me not to be so ruled by what’s happening around me, especially by what the jackasses do.  Help me to be as good to my friends and family as they are to me.  Help me not to be the worst version of myself.

I know I always need Jesus, but I need him more than ever during a New York winter.  And I am committed to one more of those, which sometimes feels like entrapment.  It feels wrong.  But then I leave my sweltering apartment, bundled up in winter gear, sweating underneath, and I walk out into the gray and feel the cool wind brush my face.  And at that moment the seasons make sense and life feels new and God gets to know more than me and my apartment may be finished, but I’m still coming along.  And I just might make it through this part.

New York City has been the biggest bitch to me lately.  Maybe she heard about my plans to leave her next year and now she’s pushing me away like Mr. Henderson did to Harry.  All I know is that when I lie on my bed and look up, this is what I see.  Two plastic-covered holes teeming with pipes and gross mismanagement.  Twin reminders of a living situation unique to this city: a shockingly expensive thimble-sized apartment managed by a landlord on the city’s Ten Worst list.  Three flights of stairs to climb to get there.  Garbage trucks outside my window at six in the morning.  Fire trucks screaming by at all hours.  A closet so small it has to be turned over seasonally.  A hot plate on top of a stove that doesn’t work.  This is what I call home.

In my relationship with the city, this time would be considered a low.

My street always seems to have some kind of construction going on.  Scaffolding, orange cones, uncovered manholes, the beep!beep!beep! of dump trucks in reverse.  As soon as one project ends, another begins.  There’s never a break from it.  But for the first time, a project has invaded my personal space.  And here’s the thing about me and personal space:  I need it.  A lot of it.  Last night I was at a dinner celebrating the eighty-fifth birthday of a friend from work.  I was seated between him and my Italian coworker.  They are both charming and wonderful.  But between his near-deafness and her Europeanness, my personal space was discarded with their every conversation.  I thought I was going to have a panic attack.  Which is how I feel every time I look up at those holes.

I am not good at the period of time in between original and new and improved. I am not good at dust and taped-up holes.  I do not like seeing what my ceiling and walls hide.  I don’t like exposing the messy parts.

But life has a way of showing you how necessary those parts are.  Like the period of time between mad and forgiven. Especially if you’re the one owing forgiveness, and you find the mad part easier.  So much easier that instead of moving through the mud of self-sacrifice you’d rather pitch a tent in the wilds of anger and spend the night there.  With two plastic-covered holes ready to fuel your self-righteousness with just a glance at them.  Then you realize that anger and love can only reside in the same space for a few minutes before one of them has to leave, because this closet doesn’t have room for both.  Time to turn over.

It’s Friday night.  I’m sitting on my couch with a glass of red wine catching up on last night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy.  In a few minutes I will transfer to the BF’s couch, where we will eat ordered-in food and watch more TV.  Last night I watched TV on my couch with the fabulous B and we ate ordered-in sushi.

Am I in a rut?

I did get off the couch one night this week to go to dinner with AC.  Where did we go, you ask?  We went to the Olive Garden.  In Times Square.  We weren’t trying to be funny or ironic.  We weren’t working on an article for the Times (blech) about top tourists spots in the city.  We just really love soup, salad, and breadsticks.

It sounds like a rut, doesn’t it?

I mean, here I am in New York City, capital of the WORLD (just ask the U.N.), and I prefer couches and chain restaurants to crazy nights out.  Either I’m in a rut, or I’m becoming a boring grown-up.  The thing is, the city becomes home because of the people with whom you share your life here.  It’s not what you do, but who you…wait, that’s not right…suffice it to say that the people who are my home here are so important and grand that sitting on the couch or at Olive Garden is enough because they make up the difference.

If this is a rut, I like it.  I think I will stay.  Let’s go to Bed, Bath and Beyond and pick out some curtains for my rut!

I will add, though, that New York leaves its mark on even the generic.  For example, on the way to 47th and Broadway and the ‘Garden, I walked behind this senior citizen:

And AC and I wouldn’t have walked out of an OG in Bama to be met with the opportunity to buy Obama condoms.  Which, at 3 for $10, are (as their peddler put it) cheaper than diapers.  And I doubt I would have sat on my couch in Birmingham discussing hot guys and Celine Dion with a dude friend.  And as for takeout with the BF…no one ever came close.

New York has a way of making all of life original.

(With that, I’ll let you know that I’m leaving this fair city for a week to traipse around California with the BF.  Don’t know how often I’ll get to a computer but can’t wait to tell the stories when I get back.  Until then, remember that you’re never to old–or too man–for a pink tweed sport coat.)

There’s nothing like running into a U.N. blockade to get your day rolling.

That sentence alone speaks volumes about the life I lead now as opposed to a few years ago, when the biggest hindrance to getting to work on time was a slow cashier at the McDonald’s drive-thru.  Now I’m walking up 2nd Avenue, noticing that these iron barricades sure are becoming more frequent and organized and what was that I heard on the news this morning while I was jiggling that toilet thing to make it stop running?  Something about the president speaking at the U.N. today?  And then I notice that the barricades have converged at 50th street creating a No Entry situation, and the resulting scene is this:

It turned out I would not be crossing 50th street until the president and his motorcade crossed on their way from the U.N. to the Waldorf-Astoria.  And I was enraged.  ENRAGED, I tell you!  Because of the empty patient schedule that I would now get a late start on?  Because of the coffee that was now further away?  A little. But mainly because the NYPD was throwing a huge rock in my path and it was annoying.  And there’s something about plans being disrupted that really gets to me…

When it became clear that no amount of huffing and puffing was going to blow these barricades down, I settled in for the show.  Which, as it turns out, can be fun once you get over the personal affront called the World Spinning in a Direction I Did Not Expressly Command.  I laughed as a shirtless dude rode his bike right up to the cops at the intersection, they yelled at him to turn around, and then they all looked at each other saying things like “Huh?” and “How did that happen?”  (I sincerely hope that the NYPD has a different unit in charge of combatting terrorism.)  I listened to the conversations around me, people calling in to work to explain their lateness and frustration.  I turned with everyone else to watch the motorcade that one cop said always reminded him of Coming to America:

Then the moment was over, the barricades were lifted, and the people went about their regularly scheduled programming.  I walked toward my waiting coffee and empty schedule humming the “Soul Glo” commercial and thinking about how the best moments are sometimes interruptions, and that life isn’t just what happens in between them.

I was walking to work Saturday morning when I looked to the sidewalk ahead of me and saw something very exciting: a dead leaf.  A brown, crunchy, dead leaf.  It was steps out of my way, but I veered to the right and hopped to land on top of it.  I heard the satisfying crunch, along with the laughter of a girl behind me who was probably half my age.  But it’s all good because fall is here.

Autumn in New York (the season, not the crappy Winona Ryder death movie) is my favorite.  You’ve got the crunchy leaves on the ground, along with the orange ones in the trees.  Central Park in the fall is a golden rainbow.  The air has just the right amount of chill in it to keep you (but not me) from sweating while walking around the city.  The effects of KFC meals (more later) are easier to hide under trendy H & M jackets.  Football season has started, which in New York involves alumni watch parties at various bars and running into people you haven’t seen all year (though maybe for a reason).  It all just feels like a new beginning, even if you don’t know what’s next.  But something about fall makes that uncertainty fresh and exciting.

The leaf was the first sign of the turnover.  Then yesterday I sat up on the BF’s roof while he manned his fantasy football empire inside.  After about thirty minutes and a turn away from the sun, I started to get cold.  At 3 pm.  Then we went to church (where we were reminded of a God who, for our sakes, cannot be controlled.  Welcome back, Tim!).  When the service was over and we walked outside, we were greeted by darkness.  No more summer 8 pm sunsets.  And then, on the walk home, there was this:

This is the Park Avenue restaurant that changes its name, menu, and decor with each season.  Since it is a super nice and expensive restaurant, I’ve only been once–last summer when some cousins were in town (and paying). Then, the awning was yellow and the dining room was white.  We had chilled soup and lemonade cocktails.  It was not dark outside.  This is one of those Only in New York places, and even if I can’t afford to eat there I love that it exists.

A few steps later, we looked to our right and had another Only in New York moment when we saw this:

WTF?  A bunch of ceramic sheep sitting on the grassy median of Park Avenue.  Since I roll with Jesus, I (sometimes inconveniently) believe there is a reason for everything.  But New York, like God, isn’t always immediately forthcoming with reasons.  So I settled on remembering that we’re all God’s sheep and need him as our shepherd so that we don’t end up looking as out of place as a lost sheep on the streets of  New York City.  Then I remembered that’s exactly what I am most of the time, and I laughed because my Shepherd has a sense of humor.

So the reason that the BF and I were walking down Park Avenue is because he had gotten some coupons in the mail this week.  Some KFC coupons.  Specifically, one for a $15.99 meal for four.  Since the proper response to this is, “Hell yeah!” followed by a googlemaps search for the nearest KFC, that is what we did, which took us to 42nd and Madison on our walk home.  And we brought our bucket of fried chicken (grilled is nasty and who goes to Kentucky FRIED Chicken for that anyway?), tubs of mac and cheese and mashed potatoes, and FOUR biscuits to the couch and paired them with a lovely Cabernet.  And by lovely I of course mean a $7 bottle from Trader Joes’s.  We ate the chicken that, for about a fifth of the price, was far superior to the entree I had at Freeman’s last week.  And we switched back and forth between the Cowboys/Giants game and the Emmys.  New York, Jesus, sheep, fall, KFC, wine, TV and the BF?  Sounds like a great beginning to me.