Junebug needs surgery. Her ACL analogue is ruptured, and she needs it fixed. Of course this has to happen just before I go on vacation (to New York - YAY!).
Have I mentioned that I live on the second floor, and she will need to be carried up and down the stairs for several weeks? I’m thrilled that she’s only 25 pounds, but I do worry about dropping her. Or throwing my back out.
Not “if he’s the one,” but how do you know when you’ve given a place enough of a chance and you still don’t want to live there?
I’ll put it out there: I’m homesick for New York. Really, really homesick. I miss the noise, and the energy, and the subway, and the LIFE. I miss having stuff to do within easy reach at all hours. I miss culture. I miss neighbors who can live with a certain amount of noise without running to the landlord to complain; if they did have a problem, they let you know directly. I miss not feeling like I’m missing out because I don’t own a car. I miss not having tweakers on every other corner. I miss having a peer group of single people in their 40s without kids. I miss not feeling overdressed when I wear a dress and tights to work. I miss seeing people out on the streets. I miss restaurants that stay open past 9 pm. I miss accessible movie theaters. I miss wearing red.
I’m having a hard time adjusting to my new city, if that’s not obvious. I’m struggling with building any kind of a social life. I don’t have friends or family here (the closest relative is more than 2 hours away), I’m single, no kids, and I don’t have any sort of obvious community, like my boss (who’s gay) did when he came here. There are colleges here, but it’s not a college town that has late-night cafes and bookstores and events. Even in the happening part of town, shops and gyms close at 7, restaurants at 9. Bars stay open later, but I don’t drink anymore, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be hanging out by myself at a bar. The buses aren’t that frequent, are expensive (no free transfers) and stop at 9 as well. I do yoga, but while I’ve gotten friendly with several people there, I haven’t yet made friends. I had to stop wearing red because I apparently work in Crips territory.
And while my job is going great, it’s been very difficult to build any kind of social life there. The library is full of cliques, and to the extent I’ve managed to connect with people, it’s been limited because either they have families and kids or — as in the case of my boss and the writing faculty, of which I am at least nominally a part — I’ve been discounted as a social person because I don’t drink. So nobody even thinks to ask me to things that have anything to do with alcohol. And you can’t exactly invite yourself along to things if no one tells you about them in the first place.
I’ve tried to get people to go to lunch with me, but they’re always too busy, or they say they will and then they just forget to put it on their calendars. But they’ll go with each other, all the time, and they socialize after work. It’s probably time to stop trying.
I’m beginning to feel like Col. Brandon from Sense & Sensibility: the kind of person that everyone thinks well of, but no one remembers to talk to.
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