One week from today, the BF and I will board a one-way flight to Atlanta.

Getting ready to leave occurs on so many levels and in as many ways.  There’s the emotional reconciliation involved in saying goodbye to the city where God brought me and did some major work on who I am, what I believe, how I live.  I grew up here.  After I finished twenty-plus years of formal education, I moved to New York and began to really learn: about how little I already knew, about how I’d been trying to make God and others in my own image, about how different real life looks than what I’d planned.  He used this city to polish away all the false stuff I decorated myself with before I discovered my real identity.  I must say, New York is one hell of an exfoliant.

So there are the tears and the prayers and the faith that go into letting go of the major construction site of my life while trusting that everything that made New York home for five years will somehow travel with me.  It’s part of me now.  Then there is the physical side of letting go: eating at our favorite restaurants one last time, pounding the pavement of my favorite neighborhoods for a final glimpse, dinners and parties with friends who will, starting next week, be a thousand miles away.

I have Mondays off, and today was my last full Monday here, my last chance to cover the terrain on my own.  And New York did not disappoint.  I left the gym and took the downtown 6 to Spring Street and walked around Soho.  The sun was bright and there was an edge of chill to the air that may have been what kept the streets (mercifully) uncrowded.  I went to Bloomingdale’s and as I was leaving, a guy raced through the entrance and out onto Broadway with the security dude charging after him.  Not much turns heads in New York, but all eyes were on this cop-and-robber duo as they turned and headed south.  I don’t know what happened, but I do love that the guy in a suit who gently greeted me when I entered the store didn’t hesitate to haul ass and attempt to take down that little thief.  Then I walked north past Madison Square Park, where a bagpiper was playing, and a couple of blocks west to stalk the Something Borrowed set.  Lots of trailers, no actors–boo.  I headed up Fifth and into Lord and Taylor, where I found my bombass wedding shoes.  Then I went to Gristede’s to pick up some cookie dough and was rudely cut in front of in line.  Five years ago, I would have been too timid to protest.  Today, some New York attitude and a carefully-placed Excuuuuse me? (head roll included) went a long way.  A lot has changed.

This morning I went through my clothes and filled a garbage bag with tax-deductible gifts for the thrift store on Third.  I usually have to go through a couple of rounds of this garment winnowing–I have a hard time letting go.  Then I look at the green pants and ask myself, “Really?  Do you really think you’ll go to a St. Patrick’s Day party where these would be perfect?” and I toss them. At some point I usually find inspiration in the thought that where I am going, there are malls and I will actually be paid for working so what I’m doing is not just getting rid of things, but making room for prettier things.  And so the garbage bag begins to fill.

Not getting rid, but making room.  Here’s to doing that in a week.

Lately, the BF and I have been so excited about our imminent life changes that we have a hard time sleeping in.  That first moment of wakefulness gives way to, rather than the usual lazy descent back into sleep, thoughts of family and cars and space and yards. The prospect of sleep diminishes with each of these thoughts.  So when I woke up early this morning to get ready for work, I wasn’t entirely shocked a few minutes later after I emerged from the bathroom and found the BF sitting on the couch.  Which is nice, to have the company and all, but Sportscenter isn’t the most compatible background for prayer time.  So I decided to piggyback prayers onto my walk to work.

Thank God.

Usually I find it difficult to pray and do anything else at the same time (though that doesn’t stop me from constantly attempting it), but today the conversation between me and my Maker flowed easily–probably due to agreeable conditions on my end.  The air was cool and the streets were quiet.  I walked along and thoughts of this era ending began to spark some nostalgia, even sadness.

Then I crossed 2nd Avenue and almost got hit by a car.

Had I been a few steps further west, she would have hit me.  She and her carful of kids, windows open, not a care in the world. Until I instinctively yelled, “SHIT!  WATCH OUT!” and was met with wide-eyed child stares.  Oops.  I turned back to my path and my God and knew what would happen if I did not stay fixed on both.  So I sent up a new prayer: Help me not to let that woman determine the rest of my day.  Because I know me, and I am just the person who would allow that destruction.  But that accident had avoided me and bounced off a freshly-donned armor of prayer and I figured that if God can work through Sportscenter, then surely he can help me forget about idiot drivers.  And not call them idiots.  So I kept talking to him about it.  He gently reminded me of a few injustices he endured on my behalf, and that pretty much settled the issue.  But grace is not a one-time deal; it must be dwelled on, bathed in, repeatedly injected like Botox.  So what I’m saying is, that was an extended prayer time.

While I was at work, tucked safe and dry indoors, thunderstorms hit and passed and by the time I said goodbye to my last day at that office the sun was shining and the sidewalks were dry.  I indulged in a luxury I almost never allow myself: a solo cab ride.  I ended up at 77th and Columbus in line at Shake Shack, waiting for the BF to show up.  It was a bucket list afternoon.

As I waited, I picked up on the conversation between the two men behind me and of course kept listening, partly because I was bored and mainly because I’m nosy.  The older man said to the younger man, “So why do you want to marry my daughter?” and I thought, Hell yeah!  Entertainment! A few seconds went by and the older man asked, “Is that a hard question?”  Burn! The younger guy started talking about how he and the daughter had met through friends and started spending a lot of time together and both of them just woke up one day and thought of the other, “Hey, you’re a nice person!” and since then their lives have just melded together and it makes sense for them to go forward.

I bit my lip.  That was not what I would call a good answer.

The dad started talking about how, next to his wife, he loves his kids more than anything and he has always provided for them financially, emotionally, and spiritually.  And then he said the thing that (a) melted my heart, and (b) let me know that he might be the kind that prays on the way to work too.  He said, “I want you to tell me how you are going to provide for her spiritually and love her sacrificially.”

BOOM.  He was that kind of dad.  And at that moment, the BF walked up.  We spent the rest of the day eating cheeseburgers, drinking milkshakes, touring the Natural History Museum, and walking through Central Park.  New York is a completely different city when the weather is beautiful and you’re not being hit by cars.  And my life is on a completely different course than it was before I came here, back when I was constantly recovering from crashes.  Now, instead of looking up and asking for a bailout from the mess I created, I’m on a path that runs more closely with the One who helps me avoid those crashes.  And I’m sharing that path with the man who provides for me spiritually, loves me sacrificially, and aced all my dad’s questions.

It’s funny how we respond when we’re confronted with happiness.  Specifically, other people’s happiness.

Tim Keller said recently that while the world defines a friend as someone who walks with you through times of misery, a truer observation is that friends walk with you when you’re annoyingly, stinkingly happy.

My track record reveals I have problems with this.  I cringe when I remember the day JB, my roommate at the time, called to tell me she was engaged. I was standing in the dental lab doing work that I felt I sucked at, fresh off a breakup.  I congratulated her, realizing this meant I was losing another roommate to marriage.  My response was so weak that she interpreted it to mean I had known the proposal was going to happen.  I took a break from thinking about how this new development was going to affect me to realize that not only was I being a completely selfish asshole, but I was hurting my friend.  I felt ashamed, and I feel ashamed now as I remember other instances of similar selfishness.  I have been blessed with many friends, one of their most obvious marks of character being that they stood by me during the years it took me to grow up and become the kind of people they already were.

Another friend of mine has three kids: healthy, vibrant, laughing, kickass boys, all of them.  Yet she is still stopped at the grocery store by people who deign to shower pity on her for not having a girl.  How often the spectators in our lives–strangers and acquaintances–stand before a snapshot from our day and whisper among themselves like art critics discussing the ways we could be improved, having no idea what tears, laughter, and life went into making that shot.

I’m as guilty as anyone of the stupidity of assuming that what I say behind someone’s back won’t eventually reach the ears that belong to that back.  So what I’m saying is, I have no room to judge.  With all the evidence from my past to serve as reminders along my path now, I am constantly challenged to abandon the judgment seat and start with humility.  Every time, start with humility.

And so, humbly (and prayerfully, to attain that humility), I approach the things that piss me off.  For the past year and a half of my life, things have gone pretty damn well.  Oh yes, I’ve managed to find complaints along the way, but daily I have woken up to the presence of love and joy and promises kept and potential fulfilled and all in all…it has been good.  And with the good has come the petty: muted support, art-critic whispers about details.  As if, after waiting until I was thirty to fall in love and then another year for him to come around, I should be worried that the BF and I aren’t meeting others’ expectations for our relationship.  I remember one time when we capitulated to hang out with friends on their terms and ended up in a bar filled with wall-to-wall flesh and our conversation was reduced to yelling at each other over some dude’s head.  This is bullshit, we told each other telepathically, because we’re cool like that, and we left that place for the couch and other like-minded couples.  And I don’t regret one second of it.

And now that we’re planning a future together, it’s interesting to see what pops up on the news feed.  Support, congratulations, offers to throw celebrations have shown up in the places I least expect and often not in the places I banked on.  Friends from ages past, mere acquaintances, people I before considered flakes, all bringing me to tears with their sincere expressions of goodwill.  After the road I’ve been on, their cheers are soul-soothing gifts from God.  And from others?  Golf claps and glances at watches.

This morning as I crossed the street, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a wheelchair veering toward me and I feared a collision.  I began to veer in the other direction, eyes soullessly straight ahead like the good New Yorker I am.  Then something inside told me to take a risk, and I did the hard thing: I looked the occupant of the chair in the eye.  Connection.  He was smiling at me.  In that moment, my over-taught yet under-functioning brain remembered what I had learned about cerebral palsy patients: how they often have above-average intelligence but are judged to be incompetent because they are trapped in bodies that don’t work, muscles that won’t cooperate with the mind’s intention.  An outside that belies the inside.

I thought about how, for the rest of us, “normal” means a well-put-together exterior that covers a wounded and flawed heart out of which judgments are made.  I grinned back at this man who is probably smarter than I am, and I said a prayer for healing: his and mine.

It is time to go.

When New York starts to feel like an industrial-size bag of cement tied to your back as you walk around each day, it is time to go.  I remember when I first arrived here and I would criss-cross the streets, miles a day, eyes wide, taking it all in, and I’d get back to my apartment feeling more invigorated, more full of life than when I left it that morning.

Now I’m just tired.

We woke up on Sunday morning to the news that some asshole left a car bomb in Times Square.  Because of quick thinkers, the necessary byproduct of a city on perpetual alert, the bomb and situation were defused.  Maybe that ominous occurrence should have been our red flag for the day.  Maybe we should have extended our bagel-and-The Hanogver couch session to a movie marathon.  But we had a plan, and we left the apartment mid-afternoon with bucket list in hand (i.e., on his iPhone).

As a New Yorker who is perpetually on high alert regarding footwear and its effects on quality of life, I should have thought better than to strap new sandals on for an afternoon full of walking.  But this New Yorker forgot what 85 degrees and 75% humidity do to bare skin.  Within minutes of walking out the front door, a few reactions occurred: sweat covered every inch of my body, blisters were rubbing on every inch of my feet, and I was in the foulest mood I’ve been in…well, since this time and weather last year.  I know I am from Alabama and I should be used to heat and humidity (and if one more person points this out I will scream), but in Alabama, when we are faced with these conditions, we either jump into a pool or an air-conditioned car.  We do not wander the black-topped streets with millions of other sweaty people.  In New York, we have no other choice.

So the BF and I descended into the subway and hopped on the uptown 6 train.  Destination: the Conservatory Gardens of Central Park, my ill-fated pick.  We ascended the steps at 103rd Street and were met with a harsh reality.  Let me put it this way: my time on the grand jury for the New York City Office of Special Narcotics taught me that there are certain areas of the city, most notably in the 100 blocks, to avoid.  Since we were in the low 100’s, the BF and I both thought we were easily in gentrified territory.  We were wrong.  Oh so wrong.  After we walked a couple of blocks, the safety of the subway becoming a distant memory and the stares of people on the street burning worse than my blisters, the BF caught sight of a cab with its light on and with catlike reflexes jumped out to claim it.

My hero.  Until the next minute, when he decided that, for the first time since I’ve known him, he really wanted a Jamba Juice. Like, really.  Enough to amend our route to the driver and have us dropped off at 61st and 3rd, where the iPhone told him we could find those franchised smoothies.  My mood was growing as angry as the blisters because this meant we would have to walk over a half-mile to get to our (my) next bucket list destination, the Frick museum on 70th and 5th.  That mood hit a fever pitch when we got out of the cab and realized that the iPhone had not updated its information to include the fact that the 61st and 3rd location of Jamba Juice had shut down.  I considered crying like a child, but bent down and changed out my Band-Aids instead.  Then we walked to the Frick.

After ten minutes of looking at old stuff that, on a normal day might have interested me but today just pissed me off, we took stock of the situation.  We had two hours to kill before going to church, which was two blocks away.  We decided it was time for alcohol.  So we ventured blindly east, no longer trusting the iPhone for recommendations.  We stopped at the first bar/restaurant we found, a place on 3rd and 73rd called Le Magnifique.  We pulled our seats up to the bar and ordered the only things, besides God, that can save a disastrous day: drinks and fries.  Then we looked around at the French film silently projected onto one of the walls, the DJ setting up in the corner, and the people speaking only French, and we realized that we were out of our element for the second time in a couple of hours.  But we were safe.  And, foiled plans and irritations aside, still on the same team.  We clinked glasses.  “Two weeks,” I said.  “Atlanta,” he returned.

Wow. I just left the keys on the counter of my old apartment and shut its door for the last time.  I lived there for four years–longer than I’ve lived anywhere other than the two houses I grew up in.  From the time I graduated high school until I moved to that fourth-floor walkup, I was on an almost-yearly moving schedule, packing up dorm rooms and apartments and unpacking in new ones as milestones were reached: college graduation, dental school acceptance, friends’ weddings.  Three of my roommates in Alabama moved out on me to get married, and I threw more than one temper tantrum with God over that pattern.  But now that milestone is mine, and I’m sitting in a studio apartment that is packed to the gills with mine and the BF’s earthly possessions.  And I only climbed one flight of stairs to get here!

After fifteen years of Temporary Living, I’m just now beginning to realize the ramifications of settling down.  The other night I was trying to fall asleep when my mind decided against that prospect and instead began to review all the decisions that we’ve made recently.  The BF was offered, and accepted, an amazing job in Atlanta.  Then I was approached by a pediatric dentist there who is interested in bringing someone new into her now-solo practice to eventually take over.  The next day, we put down a security deposit on our (hopefully) last stop in apartment living, a six-month rental that will buy us time to pick out a house.  For God’s sake, I even admitted that I may one day capitulate to driving a minivan!  Who is this person and what did she do with the perpetually single girl I used to know?

We are putting down roots.

There were a lot of things I swore I’d never do before I was married, but that was back when I was a kid who studied spelling words in her free time.  Sweeping promises were easier to make.  Now I’m cohabiting with my fiance–broken rule.  Then again, I’m living on Lexington Avenue in New York City, my home for the past five years.  And I’m marrying a Californian.  So I’ve grown accustomed to coloring outside those pre-planned lines.  Now I’m ostensibly leaving my full-of-surprises, day-to-day city life for a calmer pace.  As I wandered aimlessly around the West Village today (lie; I was actually headed straight to Magnolia Bakery for a cupcake), I considered that there may be a time soon when I can’t take the long way home because my time will not be just mine.  That’s a little scary.  But what is NOT scary is how I get to share the space of forever with my best friend; how our books are side-by-side on the bookcase now (finance squeezed in between volumes of chick-lit); how we get to call this place, and every one after it, “home” starting today.

I took the day off to recover from moving…by eating cupcakes…and this morning was the first time in a week that I’ve felt life slow down to the point where I could catch my breath and remember what it feels like to pray while sitting still.  Not a second too soon. My real Home enveloped me and began to speak to my heart of all the life that’s been occurring underneath the surface of wedding plans, career changes, and moving dates.  As he so often does, he opened my eyes: to the attempt at emotional connection behind a joke; to the amount of sadness a person must be facing to hurt others; to the steady yet at times imperceptible-to-me movement of his hand in every piece of my life.  I realized that I only think I know what lies ahead; he is already there.  He dwells in my days, and not under a rental agreement.  He has settled down.  Now I can too.

(This one’s for KA, because she asked…)

GAH.  So much to say, I feel overwhelmed even trying to start.  So I’ll start with last weekend, where the “so much” began.  (Arguably, it began in the hand of God before time was conceived, but let’s just start with the weekend.)

The BF (a.k.a. Guy in a Suit) flew to Atlanta for some interviews on Friday.  I waited anxiously by the (cell) phone all day to hear updates.  Naturally, he rocked both companies and walked away feeling good about offers.  On Friday night, I stayed in with the Roommate for one last night together (read: ordering in fries, pairing them with wine, and watching DVRed Thursday night shows) and went to bed early to prepare for a day of going to work then traveling to Atlanta.

Ha, ha!  But there’s this thing called weather!  And it erases the numbers on your airline ticket, making them meaningless!  And no amount of checking www.weather.com can change that!  So when I boarded my plane, shocked to be taking off on time, I thought I had beaten the system (the system being Things I Cannot Control But Try To Anyway). Then the captain came over the loudspeaker and told us, in the friendliest of voices, that we would not be taking off for another two hours.  While the two men behind me argued about which free items this development entitled them to, I tried to pray and read Anne Lamott (two of my favorite forms of worship).

We did take off, and we did land in time for the BF to pick me up and get me to the Sis’s with minutes to spare for a quick shower and a quicker glass of Cava (that’s champagne in Spanish, y’all).  Then we four went to meet the future Bro-and-Sis-in-law for dinner, laughs, and my post-flight pronouncements of not caring about people (therefore I would never make a good flight attendant). Sunday morning was church and lunch with the little men who are beginning to refer to me as Aunt Stephanie, which totally kicks ass. Then the BF and I went to look at apartments, the threshold of which he can carry me over once we’re legal, and after that we had a drink with a woman who offered me an amazing job that was not available last year when we were originally trying to move to Atlanta.  Hello, Stephanie.  Are you there?  It’s me, God.  Want to start trusting my timing anytime soon? The BF left Sunday night, which meant dinner for me with the Sis, Bro-in-Law, and nephew Steve the Dog.  The next morning, the Sis and I checked out the apartment that the BF and I ended up choosing.  On the way, we each consumed our share of a half-dozen fresh, hot Krispy Kremes (two for me, two for her, two for the baby).  Then she dropped me off at the airport, where I took advantage of another delay to consume a Chick-Fil-A combo.  (And so I made a deal with myself: whenever I miss New York, I will go to Chick-Fil-A.  Then the gym.)

The picture above was taken during my descent into Atlanta, when the uncertainty of even taking off was exchanged for the delay, but still arrival, of my original plan.  The dichotomy of Me will always struggle with my schedule being upset.  But as I gazed at the nature occurring outside my window, the source of which I can only believe to be Him, I was struck with just how temporary the clouds and storms are in their restless anger.  How a glance out of a tiny window in time may mistake them to be The End rather than the opening act.  And then, later in the weekend, I struggled with the differences to come once we leave this particular city where we met.  How there will never be another Tim Keller or Magnolia Bakery or Gramercy Park or rooftop of the BF’s building, but how my time with each has allowed me to approach the world less cynically and yet still with wisdom, two qualities I am discovering do not have to go hand in hand.  I have lived for five years in a place and among people (crazy, challenging people–like me!) that have exposed the anger I carried around and forced me to pull up its floorboards and face what was rotting underneath.  The superiority and inferiority complexes that originate in the same spot of insecurity, the inconsistency, the paralyzing fear of being found out as less than what I advertised.  I realized that maybe it’s time for me to stop assuming the worst of people, to maybe start believing that they’re sincere until they give me a reason not to.  Because in this move, this major life change, I will gain nothing by approaching everything and everyone with fists raised.  (Of course, if later I find out they are jerks then all bets are off.  Just sayin’.)

There is that moment in flight when you soar through the clouds and begin to float in the light that is the layer above, where you may even forget that such things as storms exist because you remember there is something bigger.  Then that something bigger releases you back through the gray to make a landing among the earthly stuff, and you know this time that there is not one part of you that hasn’t been prepared for the road ahead, no matter what surprises await.

Last night I headed over to the BF’s with a load on my back and a chip on my shoulder.  The load: another batch of my stuff to transfer to his place in preparation for the impending move out of my current hell of an apartment. The chip: my body’s response, in the form of frayed nerves and high blood pressure and bad attitude, to another day spent dealing with institutional inefficiency at NYU.

I arrived and unloaded my backpack, but the chip is harder to remove.  It requires the combined actions of wine and grace.  Cooking can be therapeutic too, and as I boiled potatoes and simmered beans, I felt the burden of the day begin to lift.  That’s when I noticed that the apartment was uncharacteristically quiet: no P90X drills or Sportscenter in the background, no American Idol theme song blasting.  The TV’s services had not yet been enlisted for the evening.  Instead, the BF and I talked as I prepared dinner and he prepared for his trip to Atlanta.  It’s always better to have the “How was your day?” drill without Ryan Seacrest chiming in.

Then the BF pulled his new Interview Suit, picked up just that afternoon, out of its shiny garment bag and went to try it on.  A few minutes later, the stove was under control and I went to check him out.  He was in front of the bathroom mirror, straightening his tie and collar, standing there in charcoal jacket and pants, blue shirt, and silver tie.  Barefoot.  I saw those toes peeking out under the expensive fabric and felt the now-familiar punch in the heart I get when the reminder of how much I love him breaks through the monotony of daily life.  The taking-for-granted part subsides: the toilet seat left up, the crumbs on the floor, the dirty glass on the table sans coaster.  All of it gets shoved back in its rightful place on the shelf marked “Minutiae” and our life is, for a moment, stripped down to what matters, what brought us here in the first place.  Love.

This guy bought this suit so that he could go rock an interview that could take us to a new city where we’ll start our life and family together.  This guy created an Excel spreadsheet entitled The List (a man after my own heart indeed) that sums up all that must be accomplished before, during, and after our move from New York to Georgia. This guy is everything I could ever hope for in a provider, friend, and love.  This guy in a suit in front of me is always planning for our next step, usually while I’m chopping food in the kitchen wondering why I’m always doing everything.

He does what he does for us.  When I grow up, and when our kids grow up, I hope we’re just like him.

This past Friday, I was stuffing 9×12 envelopes with query letters and addressing them to agents around the city as the BF was on the phone being interviewed for a job in a different city. Within a few hours, my letters were dropped in the mailbox on the corner of 29th and 2nd, and the BF was asked to fly down to Atlanta for an official interview.

For both matters, prayers ensued.

One thing about belief is that it outlaws coincidence.  So the fact that I had requested representation from multiple New York agents at the moment a new, near-immediate timeline emerged for us to leave the city is not relegated to the realms of irony, but somehow constitutes further evidence of God’s humor-infused yet always-perfect timing.  I have borne witness for awhile now to the counter-intuitive, paradoxical nature of my brand of faith: virgin birth, life from death, strength through weakness–and to the ways it has played out in my own life for the past five years. (Documented in a manuscript that one day, God and agent willing, will be bound up and displayed in a bookstore near you.)  So now I sit and wait in the silence to find out the next part of the story.  Will anyone respond to my letters?  Will we be saying goodbye to New York in a matter of days instead of the months we had budgeted?

In a packed-to-the-gills service last night, Tim told us that happiness–as the world defines it–occurs when we have ordered our circumstances favorably according to our preferences.  Joy is a different creature altogether.  Joy can survive, even thrive, in the midst of both favorable circumstances and dreams deferred.  Don’t I know it. And yet, don’t I always have to relearn and relearn it? Which is why, when the BF called to tell me about the interview he scored, my first thought was, What about all the plans I made here? instead of the more wifely, supportive congratulatory response.  (Still working on letting God use marriage as a way to make me less of a self-centered jerk.  Old habits die hard.)

When I met AW at the wine bar on Friday, I admitted the thing that, as independent New York women, we’re not supposed to admit: I’m so glad I’m not facing all of this alone.  I did it that way once: waving goodbye to everyone, packing up and driving a thousand miles so I could sit in a fourteenth-floor apartment by myself and wonder what the hell I had done.  This time, I’ll ride shotgun to the BF as he drives us toward our wedding. I’ll be leaving behind a Yankee fam but moving closer to my parents, who are so looking forward to releasing that breath they’ve held for five years as their eldest braved the jungles of New York.  I’ll be putting distance between me and some of my best friends, but shortening the gap between me and some of my oldest friends, including a Sis who’s incubating my niece.  There’s so much more give-and-take in the Leaving New York scenario than there was in the Coming to New York scenario because of all that I’ve gained since the moment I arrived to that apartment alone. All of it gained in taking chances and waiting in darkness and bearing uncertainty.

I sent a note to my Personal Encouragement and Advisory Team, all writers themselves, before I headed out to drop my penny in the wishing well on Friday. Two-thirds of them are Southern-located and one is here in New York, but I felt their prayers as if they were all standing beside me at the mailbox.  There are no guarantees when it comes to dreams or publishing, but I have a cross-country U-Haul bill and a years-developed Word document that shows there is a plan, and it is good.  I opened the box and let go.

My body is reacting to illness and the end of an era, and it is saying:  I’m so done.

I attempted my loop around Central Park yesterday, hoping that the cooler weather boded a better run.  About a mile and a half in, my lungs informed me that I could keep going if I wanted to, but they would not be joining me.  I slowed to a walk and turned off my iPod, wondering if maybe God had a message he could only share with me in quiet and non-spastic movements.  Well if he did, I’m going to need a translator, because the rest of my route I was surrounded by Europeans and Asians on spring break.  It’s too bad, because I get some of my best ideas while I’m exercising.  So if this entry is crap, please say a prayer for my restored health.  And for this God-forsaken pollen to take a hike.

The rapidly approaching finale of my five-year New York tenure is leaving me conflicted.  One hand clutches my bucket list and a tissue for the tears I’ll cry over leaving some amazing people and the city that grew me up and whipped me into shape.  The other is held in the air, “Talk to the hand”-style, signaling my unwillingness to take shit off anyone.  The second mindset dominates my days at NYU School of Dentistry, or as I think of it most days, Foreign Dentist and Petulant Entitled Student Daycare.  I realized today that I am a glorified babysitter.  I’m not kidding.  I repeat myself dozens of times a day to people who look at me like this is the first they’ve heard of the Pope being Catholic.  I make little marks beside the names of people older than I am because they decided to take an hour-long smoke, coffee, and computer break rather than stay in the class they are paying serious cash to take.  I tell a student to drill a small hole and come back minutes later to find the dental Grand Canyon.  Most of the time, I’m trying to just keep them from killing the children and reminding myself to tell everyone I know never to go to an NYU-trained dentist.  The rest of the time, I’m wondering how similar I was to them when I was a student.  I have a feeling I wouldn’t like the answer.  (Except for the hour-long break part.  I was way too scared to do anything like that.)  Throw in some complete inefficiency and mismanagement from the higher-ups, and you have my typical day.

Yet…as faculty, we have what’s called an Educational Account, which means the school doles out some money to us each year that can go to pay licensing fees, cover continuing education courses, or–my favorite–reimburse us for materials bought that can be used for “Professional Purposes.”

Cut to me and the BF hitting the Apple store downtown two weeks ago and loading armfuls of Mac products into a waiting cab.  SUCK IT, NYU.

The tear-stained tissue will make many more appearances in the coming months, but in the meantime I’m typing this on my new Macbook Air with a glass of wine and the BF beside me, and my newest music download playing in the background: my niece’s heartbeat.  That’s what I call a severance package.