I just realized that, come June, I’ll have lived in NYC for four years—the exact same amount of time I lived in Virginia.  I think you all know that I’ve never really been happy here, and despite everyone trying to reassure me with things like, “after the second/third year it gets easier/better,” I still think living here… kinda sucks big-time? There are a lot of great things to recommend it, but I’ve always recognized that I don’t have the right personality to live here long term. I feel like a failure admitting that. I’ve tried, really, really hard over the past four years to find something to really connect with, and… I don’t know. It hasn’t happened. My expectations aren’t high—I didn’t come into life here thinking it was going to be like Sex & the City or Friends or anything like that. For the past four years I’ve told myself, “One more year!  You can make it one more year!” but I’m having a hard time getting myself back to that point.

I like exploring neighborhoods and walking around, but because of my lifestyle and the whole two jobs thing, I rarely get to do it. We live in a nice apartment in a great neighborhood, but the cost of rent is suffocating and keeps going up. (I wouldn’t mind paying as much as I do if I really loved the city or if the apartment was perfect, but I hate that over a thousand dollars a month in rent translates to floors slanted at a 40 degree angle, no drawers in the kitchen, and a windowless living room that too small for even a tiny table to eat at.) Summer and the whole two weeks of spring we get are great—open front restaurant eating, sunshine, whatever—but does it justify having to deal with our newly crazy weather fall and winter?

I’m lucky that my job gets me out of the city a few weeks every year, but it’s probably not a good thing that I like the city so much better when I’m not, you know, actually in it. To me, it’s a better place to visit than live. You don’t have to deal with crazy stuff like this jacking up your daily commute. It’s strange and horrible and somehow endearing when viewed through a snarky NYC lens, but really… it’s just kind of awful to have your perspective warped like that?  It reminds me a lot of this article from The Onion.

Anyway, I’m grateful to have an apartment and a job I like that involves working with people I genuinely like. Maybe some of these feelings are stemming from the sense that I don’t have many choices or options, and therefore feeling a little trapped and directionless.  Maybe I need to move out of Manhattan and try one of the outer boroughs or New Jersey and see if that helps. It’s just amazing to me how different the experience is for everyone—how one person can spend a week in Virginia and love, love, love it and totally despise another place that millions of other people love.

(Source: acarien)

One more Cancun picture because it makes me laugh—I labeled this one on Facebook “the difference between being half Greek and a quarter Greek,” because, good LORD my mom tans like nobody’s business. She told me once that she stayed inside the entire week leading up to her May wedding, because she was afraid of making my dad look like a lightbulb in comparison. Apparently we inherited too much English and German from his side, because my mom and I spent exactly the same amount of time out in the sun and she was this tan after, like, two days.

P.S. Totally bummed my tan will have totally faded by the time I fly back to NYC tomorrow. Not that anyone could actually see my gloriously tan legs since it’s f’ing freezing back there.  

I’m missing my dad a lot today, for obvious reasons.  To be very honest, I’ve been dreading Father’s Day the same way I dreaded his birthday and my parents’ anniversary, but today definitely hit me harder than I was expecting it to, and I’ve been a little bit of a recluse, not wanting to deal with the Father’s Day brunches or sales or picnics in the park.

It’s been a strange, sad two months—on some days, it feels like he passed away years ago, on others, I feel that same numb hollowness I did when we drove home from the hospital that last time.  I keep it together pretty well on most days, but there are small moments that still sneak up on me, usually when I don’t expect it.  When I read an article and remember I can’t forward it to him, or when I’m standing in Best Buy and I can’t call him to get his opinion on whether or not it’s worth it to buy something.

I’m grateful every day that my life is overflowing with great, brilliant memories.  I love this picture—it was taken up at our old cabin in Flagstaff (this same cabin my grandmother sold the week he passed away).  We used to go up there all the time when we were younger, both in the summer to escape the heat and in the winter to go skiing.  My dad started us very early on skis; I still remember being in first grade and watching, awed, at how great of a skier he was.  I remember him out on the cabin’s porch, his feet propped up on the rails, reading, reading, reading with the mountains behind him.  And that’s been the hardest thing of all—accepting the fact that he’s alive only in memories, no matter how wonderful they are.

My mom sent me this picture she found of my grandparents.  I never knew my grandfather growing up, still don’t know him, and will probably never care to know him.  He didn’t treat his family well, to say the least—his appearance at my parent’s wedding prompted one of my great-aunts to bring her knife Pepe to stab him (my uncle Cary walked Mom down the aisle).

But I can’t deny that it’s fascinating to see the two of them together, when they were both so young.  I think my mom and Uncle Dean look quite a bit like him.

(Source: listbutnotleast, via thatkindofwoman)