Soaking up New York City

I've been feeling a cocktail of joy and sadness lately.

After two and a half years I'll be leaving New York.

In all honesty, its a miracle I'm even feeling a little sad about leaving, since for a long while, all I wanted was to get out. My family never moved around while my sister and I were growing up, but this must be what a kid feels like when their parents decide to move after they've gotten settled in their town, and at school with their crowd of friends. You move away and then you have to start all over again. Sometimes life doesn't feel fair...but no one said that it would be.

New York is putting on her pretty face all of a sudden...like she's trying to make peace before I go north. I made my bucket list a couple weeks ago of all the things I wanted to make sure I did before I leave. I'm not touristy. But, I figured I should go to the MET at least once. So I did.

I hate this painting. (One of my roommates put a copy up in our kitchen, along with some other "classics", but we like to joke about how creepy it is. Hence the photo.)

And other than antique jewelry shopping, I didn't love the MET so much either. I told my friend..."I NEED a coffee." I was getting painfully drowsy.

Most of the rest on the bucket list are going to eat at favorite restaurants with my favorite friends. :)

Packing. The enemy. I made a conscious effort to start packing really early, so that I'm not scrambling around the night before, sobbing into my boxes. It is always amazing the stuff you'll find sorting through your junk! I have a problem with keeping things, just in case I'll need them one day (I've gotten better, but still). So thankfully, packing time is also a time of purging. And that is actually a good feeling. I'm just praying that all my belongings will fit in the van. My dad's voice echos in my ears, "Laura, what is all this stuff?!" My stuff. "I don't think this is going to fit in the car." It always does. "What did you pack in here? Bricks?!" Yes, actually. Bricks.

I'm trying to eat up everything I have in the kitchen, which calls for some weird food combos; I made the worst stir-fried noodles I've had in my life, I've been trying to blend the rest of a can of pumpkin into pumpkin-worthy meals, and yesterday I made a salad with strawberries, Greek yogurt and granola (which was surprisingly good). Thank goodness I have favorite restaurants and dinner at friends' places slotted in between my leftover concoctions. 

I've also been taking pictures of everything. I warned my friends: When I start to get sentimental, my camera comes out and I try to capture each moment. Picture of my friends. Picture of a flower. Picture of the subway. Picture of the subway rat. Picture of a subway rat crawling on a sleeping man. etc. etc.

I can't get Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" out of my head. "Another turning point a fork stuck in the road..." I feel like I have minstrels following me around narrating my life through song. "Que sara, sara. Whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours to see-" SHUT UP! "As we go on, we remember, all the times we had together..." AHHHHHHHHH! The voices!!

Things have a way of working themselves out. They do. There's a time for everything.

But New York...I will miss you...a bit.