this is how it begins...

there are mornings that as i wake i feel a calling so strong to stretch out my toes before me. and i usually consent before my wits are fully formed to stop me.

the result is a short-lived charlie horse. and short-lived or not, it is painful.

i awoke to that. and the song eleanor rigby stuck in my head.

who knows what kind of day this will be?

i would move there for the colors alone.

i've been begging my parents to allow me to post some photos from their recent trip to morocco--to give my usual black and white blog a much needed infusion of color--a feast for the eyes.

what i wouldn't give to go to morocco. the colors! oh, the colors!

or prague. i could live with a trip to prague.

or berlin! oh the underground culture of it all...

in fact, i'm just about going batty waiting for a man to sail me down the dalmatian coast!

let's talk wanderlust...where would you go first?

breath, panic, girl-time, and ice cream.

this morning i begrudgingly got out of bed.

i trudged over the hill that now separates my apartment from the corner store.

i was halfway up the hill when i realized i wasn't breathing.

no, i don't mean i was breathing heavily.

i mean i was actually holding my breath.

you see, i am leaving new york for three months in exactly two weeks. by the time i return i'll be just about two weeks from turning twenty-five. (oh, the symmetry).

reality is setting in. and breath is leaving my body far too quickly, not to return.

i have an unenviable to-do list to conquer today:

and on and on...

these are things i could (should) have been doing all weekend.

{instead i sat in bed reading. and while sitting in bed reading is the most noble and glorious of all past times, even it has a time and a place. its time and place being somewhere at the end of my to-do list (meaning what i should do once all other things are accomplished)}.

last night though, i paused the panic button and met up with my girlfriend (and something of a soul-mate) alisha (the girl behind the whole doppelgaenger saga) and we pranced around the lower east side, making time for ice cream.

because, let's be honest, there is always time--always--for ice cream.

i got all things bad for me, while alisha actually got fruit in hers. oh man, i will never be the girl that puts fruit in her ice cream. (at home yes, but out on the town? no way).

so (if it's your thing) make some time for ice cream on this holiday.

i will be here at my desk, in my room, meticulously checking off all the things on my never-ending-to-do-list, breathing all the while (i hope).

the post about absolutely nothing. the brain has gone.

i feel like i should have a grand story for you. some kind of recompense for my time away from this blogspot lover of mine.

nothing. i have nothing to give you.

i was spending time with my mom and aunt. but you knew that.

all i can say is that it was uneventful in the best possible way. trips to nordstrom (getting our makeup done), the christmas tree shop, bed, bath, and beyond. breakfasts in front of regis and kelly. home-cooked dinners at my aunt's house. running to get out of the rain. falling asleep on the couch at night.

oh and listening to the endless stories about their trip to morocco with a former ambassador.

needless to say, i was quite jealous, and would like to go. myself. immediately. (oh, with an ambassador in tow, if i could swing it {though seems doubtful}).

but there was not enough time. never is.

this is all to say that i am back. and that i enjoy eating out of bowls more than off of plates. and i cannot stand the sound of gum being chewed. that is all. thank you.

worth.

he was older. dated often. jewish. born and bred in this city of skyscrapers.

i was--well, am--still young. an inexperienced dater (to put it mildly). catholic. from a city situated on bayous.

so many differences.

if i had known these things--if he had known, perhaps it wouldn't have begun.

the age alone made it difficult.

but i liked him before i knew. and when i did know, well, then it became just a number.

i asked him early on if he'd ever been married. ever proposed to anyone. those were the things that seemed important. he said no, asked if i needed to know why not. nope. not important, i said.

later, without prompting, he said, i'm not a settler. and never had more perfect words been spoken. and i loved him for that perfect, unprompted response.

and yet. that became the thing. the thing that nailed me in the end.

it was when i realized i was just another girl not worth settling for that my heart began to break.

perhaps, that's too simplistic. but that's what i felt.

i miss him. and i think about him. more often than i'd care to admit. certainly, more often than i'd care for him to know. but maybe the hardest thing has been coping with the knowledge that for him i just wasn't worth it. which becomes am i worth it? which of course, yes, yes, i know that i am.

but it's never about knowing so much as feeling, is it?

and for a while there i felt...unworthy. mediocre. like the kind of girl you can't bring home to mom.

don't get me wrong, i was not looking to meet mom. i just wanted to feel... i just wanted to feel. i don't know. better than that.

the ego takes a hit. and it's coming back to yourself that takes some time.

but a week ago when american pie came on the radio it stirred the low-country girl in me. and i shimmied around my room chasing the sunlight and laughing at my oddities. and the journey home to self trucked right along.

but it takes some time, this truckin'.

it surely takes some time.