The Big Apple

That's me on the Brooklyn Bridge. Although you can't see my entire face, you can tell that I'm smiling. I was the happiest girl in the world that day, even though it was hot, my jeans were chafing, my feet had blisters, and my back hurt. I didn't care. I was in New York. I was on the Brooklyn Bridge! Everything was right in the world.

A friend said to me once that when you're in New York, it just feels right. That's the only way I can describe it. It felt like home. The week my boyfriend and I spent there was amazing. As much as I missed my own bed and my dogs, I cried when the plane took off from La Guardia. I felt like I was leaving home instead of going to it.

I'm not sure when my long distance love affair with the city began. It's been there for as long as I can remember... a longing for a place I had never been. When I was in 5th grade, one of my teachers had us start researching colleges. This was before the internet was everywhere, so if you wanted information, you had to write a letter. The first school I wrote to was New York University. For years and years they sent me info. Because I was all of 11-year-old, I had no concept of money. I remember taking one of the pamphlets to my parents and saying, "But it only costs $30,000 a year!" My dad gave me what my family has coined as "the idiot look". I was brushed off and sent back to my room, gripping the pamphlet with my wishful little hands.

I went through tons of phases in school about what I wanted to be when I grew up. An actress! A doctor! An MTV VJ! All of them resulted in me living in New York. It's always been the dream.

Cue me going to a mid-sized, conservative state university in Texas and ending up in a 7+ year long relationship that was destined to fail. New York was obviously nowhere in sight. But even after college I would tell people that one day I would live in New York City, as if (hello!) there was any other goal. Laughter has ensued more than once after making the announcement.

Years later, I'm still in Texas. In the city whose suburbs I lived as a kid. With a boyfriend, a house (rental!), 2 dogs, 2 cats, debt out the ass, and a sinking feeling that my NY dreams will never come true.

When I confessed that to my boyfriend recently, he questioned me. "Why? Why would you think it's never going to happen?" Honestly? I'm terrified. Of failure. Of having to slink home to a quiet (fine, from my family it probably wouldn't be so quiet) chorus of "told ya so". I'm afraid of the guilt that would haunt me from asking my boyfriend, who is perfectly content where we are, to give up the life he's built for himself and move thousands of miles away, just so I could fulfill some silly childhood dream.

Then my boyfriend said something to me that I didn't expect at all.

"You know, I'm envious of you."

"What are you talking about?"

"That you have this huge dream, this big goal. Something that you've always wanted to do and you aren't giving up on. I don't have anything like that."

Well, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. I do still have big dreams of living in New York. I remember the feeling of stepping out of the subway in Manhattan for the first time and wondering what the hell took me so long to get there? (I was 28 before I finally made a visit.) I can't help but feel the chances of the dream coming to fruition fade as I get older. But I'm still not letting go quite yet... I still want to call New York home one day.

Tick, tock...

Where does my day go? I'd swear that I'm awake for 17 or 18 hours of the day, and I get next to nothing done with it.

8:00 AM - Alarm clock starts going off. Hit snooze. Repeatedly.

9:20 AM - Realize that I have no choice but to get my ass out of bed. Shower (maybe), put on clean clothes, take the dogs out, make sure the remote controls and anything else I think is valuable is out of their reach.

10:00 AM - Get to work and run to the deli to grab a bagel.

10:15 AM - Start on the first project of the day, editing down a morning show.

11:00 AM - Finish editing the morning show. The process might be faster had I not been checking e-mail (work and personal), checking Jezebel.com, checking various sites I write for, etc., between editing segments. Start working on voicetracking project.

11:20 AM - Refocus on voicetracking project. It's easy to get distracted when browsing gossip sites is necessary for the show prep process.

11:45 AM - Finish work projects and focus on the important stuff: the internet.

12:15 AM - Realize I'm hungry. Grunt about how early it is. Back to the 'net, but with a purpose. I have to find stories to write about, music clips to post on my station blog, etc.

1:00 PM - E-mail a few people to inquire about going to lunch. No one is available. Decide to hit up McDonald's or Taco Cabana. Get food, bring it back to work and eat while watching TV or reading.

2:30 PM - Back to the studio. Write copy, send someone songs, or do some other random little something.

3:00 PM - Someone on the internet is wrong. Must correct them.

3:30 PM - Contemplate working on voicetracking for tomorrow. Decide against it. Go through work e-mail. Then more internet.

5:00 PM - Voicetrack. It must be done.

5:30 PM - One last pass through Jezebel and Facebook before leaving.

6:15 PM - Hit up grocery store for soda.

6:30 PM - Home! Take dogs out. Pick up poop.

7:00 PM - Turn on TV to see if there's anything waiting for me on the DVR that isn't boyfriend friendly. As much as I try, he refuses to watch Vampire Diaries or Grey's Anatomy.

8:00 PM - Feed dogs, feed self.

12:00 PM - Bed. But not to sleep. There's usually at least an hour of reading some delish book about vampires or some other supernatural being before turning off the lights.

So on and so forth... the whole thing just seems to keep going. It's an endless cycle of me checking Facebook, checking Jezebel, reading some book (I read about a book a week, so clearly there's reading time in there somewhere), watching TV, etc.

But I feel like I get nothing done. There's nothing to show for it. Unless a few Facebook updates or comments on Jezebel count.

This is definitely something I should work on...

Sometimes you feel like a nut...

I wrote this little opinion sort of thing about what it means to be Jewish. I've always said that as a convert, I feel like a fake. I'm waiting for the day when I'm turned down at the synagogue doors in front of all of the born Jews. They'll point and laugh and call me a silly shiksa. It's truly the stuff of nightmares.

I'm not going to post my piece here... because it's published somewhere that I'll be get paid for the page views. So if you'd like, and I hope you would like, you can read it over at Associated Content.

I tried to make him watch Twilight...

My poor boyfriend, the Star Wars obsessed one, nearly jumped out of my car the other night because of Twilight.

After a long day of work (for him) and napping (for me), I dragged him to one of the inner layers of hell, otherwise known as suburbia. I had a work engagement at a bar late that night, and my usual security blanket (the promotions crew) wasn't going to be there to hold my hand. So I begged and made promises of free beer, and he agreed.

On a side note, living in a city that has banned most indoor smoking, I had forgotten what it was like to leave a bar smelling like a stale pack of Camels and having that lovely, thick cigarette muck coating my airway for a good 24 hours. Thankfully I've now been reminded why I've never taken up smoking. Score 1 for the suburbs.

We made the uneventful drive past numerous malls, restaurants, and a good dozen or so sexually oriented businesses (not much to do in the suburbs, eh?) and braced ourselves for two hours of anxiety (for me) and beers (for him).

It turned out that my presence there was completely unnecessary. I was meant to be filling in for a co-worker, and the weekly event turned out to be a well-tuned machine. So he and I primarily hung out in the bar area, sipping our drinks, chatting with a few people we knew, and occasionally handing out t-shirts and koozies.

So, two hours, and we're out. Two hours, four beers and two cocktails, and we're headed home. That's when I decided I was hungry, and we both knew that we should have slowed down long enough to use the restrooms back in the suburbs. The misery!

We ended up in the longest and slowest drive-thru line imaginable, delaying any chance to use the restroom. At this point, no taquitos really could have been worth it, no matter how cheesy. But since we were in the line, we stayed. And stayed, and stayed.

I was getting irritable, as needing to use the restroom while not having access to a restroom can tend to make a person. I had flipped through most of the slow music on my iPod (because that will ease the pain of a full bladder?) and played a bit of solitaire. Then I had an epiphany... I could get lost in a world where vampires sparkle!

Meaning, I have Twilight on my iPod and watching a bit of it might take my mind off my mounting irritability and my bladder. The second I turned it on, sound coming through the car speakers, he looked at me as if I had just told him there was no Luke Skywalker. Seriously, deer in headlights doesn't even cover it.

He reached for the door handle, as if he was really going to bail. The man was sitting with his knees held together so tightly I thought they were going to bruise, refusing to walk into the fast food joint to use the restroom out of sheer laziness, yet the very sound of Edward Cullen's voice had him ready to say "Screw it!" and walk the two miles home.

I have no idea how he's going to survive a midnight screening of Eclipse. No idea...

Yum.

There's a total disconnect between my head and my stomach. You see, my stomach? It wants the good stuff. I went to the grocery store last night and came home with a box of Cap'n Crunch, a small bag of sour cream and onion Ruffles, a pint of cookies and cream ice cream, and a bottle of wine. See? The good stuff.

Not healthy, not full of vitamins, not good for me in any way. The wine wasn't even heart-healthy red.

My head is very aware of the many benefits of eating healthy. And of being healthy in general. But carrot sticks and hummus just isn't as good as sour cream and onion Ruffles, no matter what anyone says.