Yeah, I feel these kitty’s pain! Ready to move on!

Another thing I won’t make to in NYC is the NEW IKEA IN BROOKLYN

Well, I know I will be visiting the Ikea in Canton, MI…A LOT. It’s just ironic that the week I am leaving NYC permanently (semi-permanently?) that I’d see two buses headed to the brand new Ikea. If I we’re staying here, I know I would have already been there on a Tuesday afternoon (to avoid the crowds) to buy desperately needed filing cabinets.

Another thought: Never been to Red Hook either. It’s kinda like the Georgetown of DC, trendy neighborhood with a metro/subway line hence me never getting around to ever getting there….OH WELL!

Moving is known as one of the most stressful experiences in one’s life. It’s something that young New Yorkers seem to do often but they have a lot less stuff than people in other places. This is mostly because they don’t have much space, sleep on futons, and are ready to part with their belongings. My urge is to purge but now since we are moving to a larger place, there will be more room for lots of stuff.

When we started to pack a few weeks ago, it started out with organizing everything perfectly but then these last few days its been about throwing the last few odds and ends into boxes.  They are packed delicately/correctly but still in my last few moves those are always those last few things that don’t make sense to be together that end up together packed snuggly in a cardboard box for who knows how long.

Whenever I pack up and move again, I wonder how have I accrued so much stuff, and do I really need all of this crap? Moving in and out of college was easy because it was just my clothes, books, school supplies, and a few  accoutrements, small bookshelves and maybe a fridge or tv. No real furniture to speak of.

Now we have pots and pans, real plates that match each other, a sleeper couch, a bed, other furniture, and appliances.  Oh and all of this stuff from our wedding like china, vases, and real fancy stuff.  I never thought I’d have real fancy stuff at the age of almost27. I thought I was saving that for when I was 35.  OH WELL.

Then there are all of the things I have for my future (hopefully not fictional) office. It’s weird to be packing up a one bedroom apartment for a three bedroom house. I am labeling boxes for rooms that I don’t technically have yet. Wacky. We’ve been to U-Haul six times–well the husband has been.
And I haven’t even gotten into the whole issue of deciding what to take and what not to take. Ahhh. It’s been a LONG month.

Teenage Girls may have made pact to get pregnant:

The girls showed up repeatedly at the high school health clinic, asking for pregnancy tests. But their reactions to the test results were puzzling: high-fives if they were expecting, long faces if they weren’t.School officials in this hard-luck New England fishing town say an alarming 17 girls — four times the usual number — became pregnant this year. And even more disturbing: Some of the girls may have made a pact to have babies and raise them together. via

One conclusion as to why these young women would make such a pact is the glamorization of pregnant celebrities in the entertainment media. “Baby bumps” are treated like a great purse or clutch, an awesome accessory every cool person must have. While this is probably not the only reason these girls decided to get pregnant–if they did–it shows we’re still not on target with discussing the long term circumstances of unprotected sex and teenage pregnancy. Jaime Lynn Spears anyone?

for $245! SO not worth it! I tried on a bunch of shoes ranging from $70 to $100. Should have double checked the side of the box!  Might as well go buy another pair of sneakers!

So I have a new agenda getting comfortable shoes.  I have been diagnosed with a foot problems which means I have to stop wearing flip flops and start wearing proper sneakers. But I need some stylish sensible shoes:

The list:

 Ecco Cloud Mary Jane

Clarks Essen

Keen Portable Mary Jane 

Basically I need shoes with straps in front and back so no shoes without ankle support of some kind.

I have been learning a lot about proper shoes!

Its 8:45 on a Monday night, I reach over call my local Sushi place, order our favorites, tell them to charge it to the credit card number (which they have on file), they have our address and phone number on file too, and it is here no later than 35 minutes…umm heaven!

Somehow, I don’t think I will be doing that much in my new town.

I will miss the immediacy of NYC: hailing a cab, going to a Chinese, Indian, Thai, British, Italian, bar food, Japanese, Turkish in the matter of minutes, chance encounters on the subway, running into your best friend on the street, having dessert delivered…it’s a great place for instant satisfaction.

But there is a new kind of immediacy I am looking to: jumping into a car and driving to get something. In NYC whenever we go to get boxes at the U-Haul, go to retrieve something largish from one of our offices, we have to either deal with a cab or get a zip car. While I love that these options exist, doing some stuff in NYC takes about ten extra steps compared to other places.   There are positives and negatives to living in many places.

Food for thought!

* There will be many posts like this in the next twelve days as I get ready to get out of here. 

Rebecca Walker’s piece about her mother and feminism was disconcerting to say the least. Girl w/ Pen! and Feministing both posted tasteful disagreements with Walker’s assessments of feminism.  The part that caught me offguard that a writer like Rebecca Walker who avoided addressing such solid bifurcations or face and gender in her previous books like Black, White & Jewish, went ahead and claimed that feminism was a major reason why her mother was not their for her grousing up.

According to the strident feminist ideology of the Seventies, women were sisters first, and my mother chose to see me as a sister rather than a daughter. From the age of 13, I spent days at a time alone while my mother retreated to her writing studio  -  some 100 miles away. I was left with money to buy my own meals and lived on a diet of fast food. via 

If it weren’t for feminism Rebecca Walker wouldn’t have the opportunities she is able to take advantage of now. Her work wouldn’t be published as readily. Her diatribe on motherhood would be relegated only to kitchen conversations. Without feminism, Rebecca would still have her father’s last name. Without feminism, Walker wouldn’t be the person she is. I am sure her relationship with her mother is a difficult one, and probably Alice Walker took advantage of feminism to avoid being a proper parent. However, it is not feminism’s fault that the Walkers don’t have the best relationship. It is a combination of timing, ideologies, personality, the past, present, and future.

and it reminded me of how I feel about the City:

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter - the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in search of something . . . Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.”

E. B. White (1899-1985) Here is New York

I am definitely a combination of the first and third New York. I wasn’t born here but my parents and I moved here when I was ten. I had lived in San Francisco and Washington DC prior to NYC, so it was easy for me to take the way the city operated for granted. I assumed the loud noise, size, and opportunities you could find here were natural. I did move away a few times to college (only 20 minutes away) then San Francisco. I assumed the second move would be permanent, not in SF per se but a permanent detachment from the city. I was wrong. I came back six months later but came with a quest to find a home for myself and fiance. To live amongst my friends who were on their own quests. The second New York I found was different than my childhood. I suddenly realized how much money you needed to get by and that you had to have desire for something here to make it work. I began to find that I didn’t have the ambition to want to live in NYC but I still loved it.

As I get ready to depart for literally greener pastures, I know I am not leaving permanently. I will reside in another state (my home state) but I will always have a life here. I think there should be a fourth New York, those come here, live her for over fifteen years, and then move away for personal or professional reasons but always hold onto their new yorkerhood. I am ready to move on but I know I will miss it like hell!

* An email from a friend reminded me why I wanted to write this. Otherwise, I may not have gotten around to it.

SPOILER ALERT: don’t read if you don’t want to be spoiled!

I’m a huge Sex and the City fan but something about seeing it in a movie theatre felt odd. Then my friend figured it out for me; we’re used to watching it in the privacy of our own homes whether it be alone or with guests. When I went to see the movie, I went alone and snuck into the theatre after the lights went down. I rushed out before the credits started because I didn’t want to see anyone. I wanted to see it and enjoy it alone.

After I saw the film, I finally started to read the reviews. There were the criticism I agreed with and expected: too long, where were the men’s voices, the point of the Louise character, and it was made for the fans. There were the good parts: the dramatic wedding scene, Carrie and Big doing anything, Carrie and Miranda hanging out, and other hijinks.

There was some interesting commentary about how the SATC ladies seemed to have made it financially. Carrie doesn’t have to worry about money anymore. Samantha, who never did worry about money, hits it big in Hollywood. Charlotte continues to spend, spend, spend. Miranda doesn’t consider the monetary complications of leaving her husband. Even the new character, Louise, while hints at not having much money and renting designer bags, never complains about how much $$ it takes to look stylish in the Big Apple. IS the SATC film mostly about class not relationships, sex, romance, or friendship? No but it certainly paints us a picture that everyone in NYC has the big bucks and if they don’t they are on their way to getting them.

I have a few complaints. (1) Where was Charlotte’s storyline? All she had to quibble with was how she was worried about running during her pregnancy! The audience didn’t even get to see Charlotte tell Harry that they were having a baby the old fashioned way. And why did she have to get pregnant? It didn’t seem necessary. (2) Miranda’s storyline was pretty stale and predictable. Steve cheats then she forgives him. That was it. It revealed nothing about her character except that she is bitter. (3) I did understand the BIG/Carrie storyline but in a way it felt like more of the same…what if she was the one “who couldn’t do it.” (4) The Louise character. Now I wasn’t expecting a big diatribe on race as a lot of other people wanted. BUT why would she come to the city to find romance just to move home once her ex came begging for her back? The whole point of the series was how much Carrie and her ladies loved NYC. They don’t compromise anything for their city. So why expect anything less of Louise?

But I did love most of it. It was only a movie after all but it was fun to see the outrageous clothes, money spent without thought, going out on the town. Miranda has the two most revealing sex scenes, and Samantha had none. I did thoroughly appreciate Samantha’s speech to Smith about how she loved herself more even though it wasn’t the “right” thing to say. That is the SATC I love, the one that questions how romance does work with a woman’s identity. I don’t think that SATC is a feminist show but I don’t think it is anti-feminist either.

Well, of course, all the ladies got their happy endings or variations of. It was well worth seeing it, but I don’t know what I think of another one. One just may be enough.