We moved. Our apartment has been gutted, appliances pulled out, carpet ripped up, and the new tenants (a family with two small boys) move in at the end of July. The reality of leaving hasn’t quite hit home yet, because we’re “down the shore” for ten days, as we always are, reveling in bare-feet-and-shorts life of Long Beach Island.
There’s a lot to say about moving–almost none of it good–but I’m still too fried to say anything coherent, so instead: a list. I’m linking up with The Good Life, over there in the upper-left-hand corner of the country, where every Monday Stasha runs the Monday listicle.
I love lists. I make them all the time – I even make lists about what lists I need to make. Husband–a non-list-maker–scoffs at me, but I don’t care. If I write it down, then I don’t have to carry the thought around in my head and given that my memory is becoming ever more sieve-like, lists are life-savers.
I’m sure our new life in Abu Dhabi, which officially starts in August, will be wonderful in many ways, but it’s not going to be life in New York; it’s not going to be my regularly scheduled life. And here’s what I will miss about that life:
1. Green trees and the breeze stirring around the leaves
2. The Union Square Greenmarket, particularly early on a summer morning
3. Peel’s Cafe house muffin with lemon and rosemary
4. Trader Joe’s
5. Public art: sculptures, paintings, murals, mosaics
6. The Highline, even with all the damn tourists and hipper-than-thou locals
7. Riding my bike
8. Our opera subscription (which we’ve “sublet” to friends: enjoy, Lauren & Brian!) and the joy of watching the fountain at Lincoln Center
9. Walking around in a tank-top and shorts
10. The subway
11. The first snow
What won’t I miss?
1. The 14D bus
2. The amount of skin shown, during summer months, by people who really should be wearing more clothes
3. The 14D bus
4. The entire month of November. Ditto the entire month of February
5. The second snow
6. The junkies who hang out in Union Square doing slow head bobs up and down, almost looking as if they’re doing yoga spine rolls.
7. The sirens. The dirt. The noise.
8. The 14D bus
9. The subway
10. The third snow
Even your “things you won’t miss” list, makes me miss my old apt in the west village. sigh…
And we will miss YOU. I’m missing you already and you’re not even out of the country yet. Kicking myself for not somehow making another lunch happen while it still could. Well, it’s going to be one grand adventure, for sure.
Man, I gotta get back to New York!
I can’t imagine having to up & leave like that. It has to be so difficult. I would do it, if the opportunity for better or necessity came about – but I wouldn’t have to like it, at first.
Great list! I don’t even know NY & I feel like I miss it from your list!
I guess that 14D bus really sucks?
So I take it 14D bus is the reason you are moving to Abu Dhabi? 🙂
Please keep writing. You must. You simply must…