Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.

SO it’s been a while, but life has taken my lemons and opted to provide me lemonade. So I have been busy drinking up. I have finally given up on being a miserable cow and opted to be surrounded by all that is good in the world by making the big move to Manhattan. It truly is the city that never sleeps and even though I am typically tucked away into bed by 10 with several hours of Frasier re-runs to lull me to sleep, I have had the blessed opportunities to share a few laughs and oddities since I’ve been here.

When I first arrived, the beauty was overwhelming. Everywhere I went statuesque beauties haunted me. There was always someone more emaciated, more layered, more hidden by gargantuan sunglasses. I simply could not digest the perfection that assaulted me on my daily commute. Shiny men with strategically sculpted hair, tiny pores, and skinny jeans. Tailored women with bags larger than their shriveled frames and dogs tinier than street rats. I am not the jealous type, so playing the part of a fly on the wall of a very exclusive party was thrilling to me. I felt special by association honoring every walk along 5th Avenue and nap in Central Park as the first. I often would comment on how it was impossible for something to be this perfect. How was it that I get to live here- forget Disney- this is the most magical place in the world I would often shout from assorted rooftops.

Then I looked around and realized that really nothing is perfect at all. First I realized how sizzling hot I feel at all times, how much I hate tourists as I am forced to shimmy by their fanny packs and poorly behaved children on a daily basis, and how low my standards of living must be shifted. My once ‘quaint’ apartment is too small, too dark, but mostly infested with pests. Yes, the hell of my life is centered on what has become a very furry situation.

The first mouse had me paralyzed on the couch for a solid 45 minutes crying about the fact that I no longer had control over my life. And not much has changed. After a mouse in the kitchen, a mouse by the TV, a mouse on the counter, a mouse in the garbage, a mouse in the shower, I finally reached an all time low last night. As I sleepily stumbled into the bathroom around midnight I was forced to sprint back to my sleeping chambers before terror paralyzed me, as I spotted a brown fur ball with a gigantic tail perched beneath the bathroom sink.

Panic set in. I broke out into a cold sweat and repeated the word “no” aloud approximately 50 times. I am pretty sure I blacked out for a period of about 5 minutes during this chant. I shivered for several minutes before I mustered up the strength and courage to call my mom and whimper for nearly 20 minutes about how I had no control over my life. She gave me the power to run past the bathroom, confirm the existence of said rodent, and leap onto the coffee table to whimper for another 30 minutes about my need to end my life. My poor mother gave me several options to get out of the sticky and tiring situation of standing on a table for the remainder of the night, which I declined one after the other. After much reasoning I agreed to run past the bathroom back into my bedroom and as I did so I heard what I then determined could only be classified as a rat whimpering, frozen in fear in my bathroom. My mom pointed out that it would be more scared of me than I it, but I still vowed never to go into the bathroom again. I figured I could find away to avoid the bathroom for the rest of my days here. I could move out early, crash on my friends’ couches, shower at work or the gym, it would be fine!

It was a sacrifice I was willing to make until my roommate’s boyfriend came home and I alerted him to the pest issue. A few resigned moments later he asked me if by mouse I meant the hair dryer chord that was dangling out of the cabinet underneath the sink. It took me a few delayed moments to remember that I had in fact left a mouse sized chord dangling from the cabinet not 15 minutes before my rodent sighting.

It was then that it settled in that the mice own me so much that even when they aren’t running the halls and stealing our bath bubbles they sneak their way into my mind in by means of visual hallucination. I felt a little silly after my mistake, especially since I kept my poor mom up way past her bedtime by crying to her on the phone. But also it caused me to wonder- will I ever be able to handle issues such as these on my own? There is only one way to find out- but in the meant time I am getting a giant fuzzy feline to keep the enemy ships at bay.

So the apartment situation has been eye opening, but as I always said when friends would move to NY and complain about rent, “You aren’t paying for the apartment, you are paying to live in this glorious land.” And although I have uncovered a few imperfections, and perhaps the party I am at is really not so exclusive at all, and for every modely type I see, there are equal parts lunatic, isn’t imperfection the most interesting anyway? Besides what in God’s Green earth would I do all day if I couldn’t complain about something? SO I am back. To observe, to complain, to inspire. (Just kidding about the inspire- well you never know, it could happen!) The book is still happening, but the hiatus had gone on far too long!