ATC in NYC

Nothing like a little R&R to put things into perspective. I spent the better part of my Christmas break adrift on the high seas with my madre and padre. It was just the stint I needed to come back and face the ridiculous New York cold with renewed energy.

The cruise itself was pretty fun. I’ve never been on one before and I liken it to summer camp for adults. You’re holed up with a bunch of people you will never see again for the rest of your life but you resolve to become best friends for seven days if only to make it through the mirage of organized games with some semblance of sanity. Next time I go, I’ll probably bring an entourage (or a good book… I caught up on TV movies and season 4 of “How I Met Your Mother” this time around), but the white sandy beaches and Caribbean air were just the ticket to relaxation. Which I needed. Like wo.

Now that I’m back in the city, I have to decide which one of my one trillion New Year’s resolutions I’m going to keep. I usually don’t make any, but this year I thought there’s so much I want to do that there’s no harm in at least saying I will do them and and if I don’t follow through no one will be the wiser.

One of them is to blog more. (I’m well on my way!)

Another is to use the one-year gym membership I spent a pretty penny on last summer and have neglected ever since. They sent me an e-mail this morning saying that my first six months with them I only got 6 out of a possible 24 new member medals. Wah Wah. As if I needed a reminder of my laziness. Or of my failed bid at this year’s Winter Olympics. It will get better though… as soon as it’s warm enough to walk to the gym every morning. Soooooo… April?

I also want to grocery shop instead of eating out all the time, learn the entire Adobe creative suite, take more pictures, go to church more, resurrect my other blog, go out more with new friends in this wonderful city, keep up more with old friends via phone and snail mail, get back into literature and floss daily.

Sound doable?

I was complaining about how late I had been leaving the office this week on the phone to my mom when she said something that really struck me: “Sounds like your honeymoon period with New York is over.”

As per usual, she was correct.

It just never occurred to me that parts of living up here would be un-fun. I mean, it’s New York. Glamorous. Sophisticated. Always something to do. Too bad “glamorous” can mean chaining yourself to the laundromat every other Saturday morning because that is the only feasible window you will ever have two uninterrupted hours to cleanse your lights and darks. To that end, “sophisticated” can mean ignoring the belligerent rants of the homeless man on the subway. And “always something to do” translates directly to “never leaving your office… ever.”

In light of this realization, I made a concerted effort this weekend to remind myself why I picked this city and why it is still the bomb diggity.

On Friday evening, I hung out in a trashy Penn Station pub with some of my favorite Belmont faces waiting for some out-of-town friends to arrive. (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, playing host in this city keeps you on your toes by making you an eternal advocate of all its eclectic glory.) After their bus arrived, we moseyed on down to the only place to be found on the Lower East Side before making a few really bad, diabetic coma-spawning decisions around 2am.

Saturday meant sleeping in until it was time to try my hand at lottery tickets with a favorite former intern. Didn’t win. But that’s okay when you live here and can try any day you want! The rain didn’t keep me and the out-of-towners from patronizing the greatest art museum this side of the Atlantic (which is made all the more sweet when you can get your little entry button for a mere one dollar bill). After that, it was another lottery ticket attempt with another Belmont favorite which also came up short but happened to be across the street from an equally solid Broadway offering which I didn’t mind seeing for the fourth time (even if it was standing room only). Dinner with the visitors and scoffing at $15 cover charges in favor of downtown chicness capped the evening.

And now it’s Sunday. The sun is out, my tummy is full with brunch and I’m looking at another day of absolutely nothing to do but enjoy this town.

The honeymoon may be over, but this relationship is just getting started.

I think I figured out why New Yorkers are so much skinnier than the rest of the country. It’s not because we walk everywhere or eat “greener” than everyone else (though those reasons do figure into the equation somewhere); rather, it’s because no one ever eats a darn thing up here.

When I first started my Big Boy Job, I would quietly laugh to myself as my coworkers chained themselves to their desks and refused to eat lunch or (on a rare occasion) allowed themselves a quick 10 minutes to grab an exorbitantly priced sandwich. But I have lived the life of someone who fears coming back to an insurmountable inbox of e-mails. I watched the remainders of my sanity flicker. And, in short, I was afraid.

Case in point, today for “lunch” I had a cup of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie, stolen in a covert 5-mintue break from the computer. At 3:30 pm.

It extends even further than just the inability to escape the clutches of Microsoft Outlook. In corporate America, I have discovered that shunning food is often the proper way to say, “I am a professional,” right up there with using words like “Best,” or “Regards,” at the end of your e-mails. Take a catered board meeting for example: if there is a heaping tray of delectable treats with which you would otherwise be shoving your face if you were at home on your couch watching nine straight hours of Bravo TV, you must refrain from doing so because you are in the company of your working peers. And busy and important people never show that they love food. Nay, they scoff at baskets of mini muffins provided for working breakfasts.

Will these trends ever reverse themselves? I wonder this in sincere Culinary Carrie Bradshaw fashion. If they never do, I hereby deem this The City That Never Eats.

I was on the phone with Liberty Mutual this evening, trying to explain to them that they had made yet another error in my insurance bill (don’t worry, kids, they have great customer service) when it dawned on me: I spent so much time and mental energy on prepping for my move to the city that I forgot I was undergoing another big transition… becoming an adult.

I have decided that being an adult is no fun because you have to pay for things you don’t want to pay for. Like prescription medication. And airfare. And socks. Wasn’t it only a few months ago that these things appeared miraculously out of thin air? I mean, I always reminded myself that I was really lucky to have my parents foot the bill on so much stuff during my formative years, but I don’t think I could have really grasped the full extent of that coup before having to hash through the specifics of my flexible spending account withholdings with the human resources lady at work.

In all honesty, though, I have always suffered from an eternal case of oh-my-gosh-I-hope-no-one-finds-out-how-young-I-am. I mean, how adult can I be if my Monday alone featured a snack break to Duane Reade for Mountain Dew and a jumbo bag of Peanut M&M’s, a double-header viewing of “Gossip Girl” (I am proud) and “Dancing with the Stars” (no, I am not proud) with my lovely roommate, and two (yes, as in the majority of my day’s) meals comprised solely of Eggo waffles?

Maybe this assessment does more to prove my ever-stellar dietetic intake than the absence of this so-called adulthood, but you get the picture. Just because I have to remind myself to make dentist appointments and pay for my own dry cleaning does not mean that I have necessarily grown up.

And, in some ways, I hope I never do.

I had one of those where-else-but-New-York experiences on Friday morning. So my pal Anna and I have decided to have a weekly Starbucks date before work to catch up on each other’s lives. The fact that the Starbucks in question is exactly two blocks from both of our offices is just one of the details that makes this arrangement perfect.

I was running a little late this past Friday, and I strolled in to find her waiting at the end of a fairly long line. We started to exchange pleasantries when, out of the corner of our eye, we saw money… lots of money… flying all around us and fluttering to the floor. I looked closer to see that someone had spilled what had to be about $1,000 in $20 bills around this tiny Starbucks on Seventh Avenue. Initially, I assumed it was a tourist who had just come from the ATM and had tripped, losing all their cash in the process. But no. It was a crazy woman. Who had done this on purpose. She was dancing in the corner with her iPod and kept saying, “I just wanted to do something crazy.” She was giving the money away.

By the time I realized what was going on, most of the people around us had already scooped all of the bills. I made out with $60 and Anna made away with $180, but I’m pretty sure there were people that got a few hundred bucks  out of the situation. I’m still kicking myself for not being a greedy monster and hording as much as I could handle.

All of this, mind you, on top of the return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte. Friday Morning Score.