Chaos

Our apartment is in chaos. All our patings are leaning against one wall. Suitcases, shoes, files, bags, loose papers and boxes are everywhere. I'm almost looking forward to the movers coming tomorrow because then at least the apartment will be neat. In fact, it will be almost empty. But we're still going to live in it for 10 more days. We haven't quite figured that out. I think we're in denial - at least I am. It's funny, the thing Matt and I are most anxious about it that we'll have no TV. We live in one of the most exciting cities in the world, and we're not huge TV-watchers anyway, but after a long day at work we sit down in front of the tube. It will be interesting to see how we do without it. I feel like we'll be camping - in a West Village apartment.

This morning we looked at the lease for our new apt., which apparently probably has lead paint, asbestos and mold. "It's only 6 months," Matt said to me. Indeed.

The Movers Are Coming, the Movers Are Coming...

The headline says it all. Matt has been in charge of hiring movers to pick up all our stuff, load it into a giant truck and deliver it to us in California. As much as I've wanted to avoid dealing with it -- because that would make the move really, really real -- they are coming. Soon. I only have 3 days left in my fully furnished apartment. On Tuesday, it will be barren and I won't be able to ignore this monumental change.

Things I've Done in New York

In every city there are BIG THINGS to do -- museums to visit, sights to see, restaurants to eat in. As I count down my days in NYC, I thought I'd make a list of things to do that I haven't done here. So far I have come up with, visit the Frick Collection. I'm proud that that is the only thing I can think of. I've spent my 13 years here well -- experienced the city, lived a NY life. If you have suggestions for things I should do in NYC, please, please let me know.

In the meantime, here are some of the things I have done:
Gone to the top of the Empire State Building, visited Ellis Island, toured Governor's island, ridden my bike around Staten Island, taken my life in my hands - at least 5 times - by riding the Cyclone at Coney Island, gone from tip to tip and side to side on Roosevelt Island, taken a ride on the 59th Street Tram, danced on top of a speaker as a go-go dancer at CBGBs, taken African dance lessons in Harlem, visited the MET, the Whitney, the old MoMa, new MoMa and even the interim MoMa, P.S. 1, The Museum of Natural History, The Cloisters, the old Hayden Planetarium (but not the new Rose one), gone to a wedding in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, checked out the Orchid show at the Bronx Botanical Gardens, eaten Italian food on Arthur Ave. in the Bronx, eaten seafood on City Island, worked for a sex writer on Central Park West, shopped for food the day before Thanksgiving at Fairway (an experience not for the faint of heart), fallen asleep on an decaying pier in Redhook Brooklyn on a lazy Sunday, gone on a ride-along with NYPD on the Lower East Side, witnessed a shooting, watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from a 5th floor window on Central Park West, ridden my bike all the way around Manhattan, run a race around Central Park, taken a carriage ride in the park, rented a boat in the park, had high tea at the Plaza Hotel, gotten kicked out of the Campbell Apartment (for wearing sneakers), eaten Easter brunch at the Rainbow Room, danced and drank martinis as Windows on the World, lived in Williamsburg before it was hip, dated a musician, been to Sting's dressing room at the Beacon Theater, watched a fashion show at Bryant Park, went ice-skating at Woollman Rink as a light snow fell, eaten a pastrami sandwich at Katz's deli, owned real estate in the West Village, fallen in love, been heartbroken, found the man I will marry, seen the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan going into his Sutton Place mansion, attended the American Theater Wing luncheon, been a New York City Grand Juror -- during grand jury appreciation month!, attended the best picnic ever with a giant Puerto Rican family on Staten Island, eaten dinner (several times) with an ex-cop who was carrying a gun, attended the U.S. Open, played ping-pong at the West Side park, watched movies on a rooftop in Brooklyn, interviewed Al Pacino at the Tribeca Film Festival, saw Alan Cumming in Cabert, performed stand-up comedy all over Manhattan, sat next to Salman Rushdie at a movie screening. I'll add more when i think of it.

Happy Mistake

Today I got off the subway one stop early -- totally by mistake. This is a train ride I have taken every weekday for six years and have never once gotten off at the wrong stop. I was thinking of New York. My mind wasn't on the present. By the time I realized I was at the wrong stop, I was already up the stairs and on my way out of the station. Upon exiting, the first thing I saw was the gleaming top of the Chrysler Building. What a beautiful sight. I'm so glad I got off at the wrong stop.

Spring Has Sprung – Thank God

We slept with the windows open last night. Today, I noticed the first leaf on the tree outside my window has sprouted out. The birds are ecstatically chirping. It's spring in New York. The streets of the West Village feel light and giddy. Pink cherry blossoms and bright green new leaves, tulips and daffodils are everywhere. It's been a long winter, (and the temperature is supposed to drop again for a few days) but when the spring comes to this city it's magic. This is the time of year I would normally hop on my bike, feel the warm breeze on my face and glide around the city to see what's new. My bike's in storage with a flat tire and soon it will be on a giant truck on its way to Los Angeles. For some reason, that kinda kills me. I need another New York bike ride or two before I leave. It's the only proper way for me to say goodbye.

Also: Sarah made it through surgery! I got to visit her in the recovery room for all of two minutes, but she wasn't all drugged out and in pain as I had imagined. She looked excellent. Yay!

And: My apartment is in contract. Yay, again!

Countdown: 15 days left in NYC

What the F Is Up with Park La Brea?

So we've been "approved" to move into Park La Brea in L.A. I'll say again, it's kind of a weird place, but I for one am super psyched that our little "townhouse" has two bedrooms, two stories and a patio. That rocks! But the woman who signed us up – our leasing agent lady – quit days after we were there and moved to the desert. Now, I have left three messages for other Park La Brea people asking for our contract, trying to figure out our new mailing address and minor details like that! And no one is calling me back. And it's pissing me off.

Good Luck, Sarah

Thoughts go out to my future sister-in-law, Sarah, who is having serious hip surgery today. Saw her last night and she was really nervous, but I know she'll be OK. We had dinner with the whole family -- including her mom and dad who have flown in to be here. Here we are. And here's a link to her blog.

Don't Cry For Me JFK Airport

Saying goodbye to NYC goes in stages. Yesterday, was the stage where I cried over JFK airport. I got teary as Matt and I flew over Queens and made our descent from London. The thing is, it felt a little forced. I was thinking about riding my bike around Brooklyn and Queens, which I used to do a lot and which I'll miss a lot. But then I started thinking about how this was going to be the last time I'd land at JFK. It seemed like something I should be sad about. I always get bummed about "the last time" I do/go/see anything. So I kind of forced the tears out. When I turned to Matt and told him why I was upset, he had to work to stifle a laugh. I mean, JFK is a complete pit. It's one of the worst airports I've ever been to and I think about that every single time I fly there. There might be a lot of things to cry over about leaving New York, but JFK airport is not one of them. (Oh, and don't get me wrong - Matt was very sweet about it and assured me that I would indeed fly into JFK some day again.)

London Calling

It's been a few days since the last update because Matt and I went to London. We were there because Matt's best friend, Oliver, just had a baby with his girlfriend, Dagmar, and Matt is the Godfather. I wasn't going to go -- I only have two weekends left in New York City! -- but decided to do it and am glad I did. The baby, Imogen, is adorable and was so much fun to get to know. She has 2 settings -- silent and screaming. Here is a picture of the latter. Maybe it's not right that we took turns taking pictures with her while she was hysterically crying, but how could we resist?

Imogen has the lung capacity of three grown men, so I was nervous that she would really put the acoustics in Westminster Cathedral to the test during the baptism -- but she slept through the entire thing, even when the priest took her hat off and dumped water on her head!

As for London, we didn't spend much time in the city. Ollie, Dagmar and Imogen live in Peckham, which might technically be London, but isn't in the city itself. Still, we did have a drink by the Thames and dinner in a pub with our old friend Amy. And we popped by the London office of the magazine I work for. See how I wrote "popped by" ... After 3 days there I took on a British accent. I'm so Madonna!

My Precious Shredder

Who knew that shredding would turn me into Gollum from "Lord of the Rings"?

My filing cabinet is overflowing with bank and credit card statements I've been accumulating since 1994 – so I bought a cheap shredder to make a clean start. As soon as I had identified the first batch of shreddable material, I plugged it in and started letting the paper fly. The sound of its jaws ripping the paper into tiny bits was deafening, but I felt a kind of obsessive glee over the destruction. Matt, who was watching a nature show, gave me a death look. (Really it sounds like an industrial sized blender making mixed drinks out of granite.) I did a few more shreds until Matt yelled, "I'm watching something. Can't you shred another time?" I was disappointed, but he was right.

Over the next few days the shredder seemed to call to me like the ring calling to Gollum. I'd slink by thinking of it as my preciousssss shredder, wanting so badly to go to it. By Sunday morning, I'd accumulated a big pile that needed to be shredded. Though it was only 8:30 a.m., while Matt showered (poor guy had to work) I put on some coffee and cinnamon toast for him. Behind me, the shredder seemed to call out! I felt an overwhelming need to shred. I thought, 'I'll just do five pieces.' But when I'd done five, I wanted to do five more, then five more. After a few minutes, Matt rounded the corner into the kitchen, a horrified look on his face, and shouted over the growling machine, "Marla!" Immediately, the trace was broken and I rocked back on my heels away from the shredder, dazed. "It's too early," Matt said. "People are sleeping." I hung my head, ashamed, then asked: "What time is an acceptable shredding hour?" He said maybe 10. I managed to hold off until 11 -- then shredded the shit out of everything.

Me & NYC

It's pouring rain. I simply couldn’t drag myself to brunch on the Upper East Side with my friend Catherine – so we had a phone brunch instead. I sat in my PJs watching the rain wash down the window and catching up with her. When we talked about my decision to leave the city, I said that I'd never really thought of New York as my "home." "Really?" she asked. "You seem like such a New Yorker to me." It was great to hear. "Thank you!" I said. New York has been my home, really, and I am a New Yorker – mostly.

Since I graduated from college, the main thing I have done with my life is move to New York. Asked what I planned to do when I was 22, I answered, "I'm moving to New York." My whole schtick is that I moved here with $1000, no friends, no job and no place to live – and I survived. For many years, surviving in the city was all I cared about. No matter what happed – broken hearts, shockingly low bank statements, layoffs and loneliness – I stuck it out in New York. As friends came and went, flirted with life in the city, I was always here. But now I'm ready for a new adventure.

Freak Out No. 1

I freaked out on Thursday about leaving NYC. I'd had 1 1/2 gin and tonics, which partly accounts for it (I'm not much of a drinker) but what really precipitated the freak out was that realized I'd planned a goodbye dinner with a friend on the same night I'm flying to London. (More on London later.)

My friend will be out of town for the last weeks of my New York life, so if I don't see her next week I might miss her altogether. I can't just say, "I'll see you when you get back," because I won't be here. I'll be in L.A.

This started me thinking about the things I will miss about New York. One of them is seeing the trees outside my window get their leaves. Right now, the trees are so bare I can see all the buildings that surround my apartment. But by the end of May, they will be so full and green the apartment will seem like a little secluded tree house. But someone else will watch the tiny leaves sprout out of the branches this year.

A Word About Tourists

New Yorkers are used to negotiating their way around tourists. On a day-to-day level tourists are super annoying: In a group, they move like a giant unpredictable – but always slow – blob hogging the entire sidewalk; they stop dead with no warning causing near-collisions among New Yorkers who walk at breakneck speeds; they usually dress with truly atrocious fashion sense (except the Italians); sometimes they even gather in hordes around the front door of my apartment building eating connoli and going on walking tours, forcing me to slink through their midst while half-awake on a Sunday morning. BUT.... I'm a generally optimistic kind of gal, and so I try to see the tourists as something positive. Their presence reminds me that New York City, my home for the last 13 years, is special. It's a place that people read about, talk about, sing about and dream about. People save their money and take time off work just to come here – sometimes only once in their lives. Not everyone loves it. Some are overwhelmed by the noise and crowds and prices and smells. But one thing is certain: No one will ever forget New York City.

We Are "The Others"

So Matt and are watching "Lost" Wed. night. (I'm one of the few people still devoted to the show, and because we live in a studio Matt suffers through it with me.) And the show is doing one of the flashbacks – but this time it's a flashback to the same island where everyone is stranded and it shows the village where The Others have been living. (The Others are the bad people). I gasp and say to Matt, "Do you know what their village looks like?" He shoots me a dead stare and says, "Don't say it." I don't say it, but we both know it: The Others' village looks like the slightly freaky gated community where Matt and I are moving to in L.A. It's called Park La Brea and has these neatly planned identical rows of beige homes with white trim that all look exactly alike. The actual little homes are adorable and spacious, but I feel weird about the identical houses thing. I picture myself more of a beach bungalow type.

My long national nightmare ...

It's Thursday. My real estate agent and I have to decide whether or not to hold an open house this weekend. I so, so, so want this part of moving to be over. I want someone to love my apartment like I do, to promise to take care of it – and to give me lots of money for it. It seemed like that was happening two weeks ago when a woman made the perfect offer. All cash. Closing date just days before my planned move. And she seemed to adore my apartment. It would be in good hands. The fact that it was all coming together seemed like a sign from the Universe that I'd made the right decision, that my life was moving in the right direction after years of not moving in any direction at all. I rarely let myself get excited with abandon. But when that offer came in, I was ecstatic. A day later, the deal fell through. I was so fucking depressed I came home from work, got in bed and cried. Then I sat in the dark drinking wine and watching "Dancing with the Stars" until my fiancé came home. A few days later, the same woman with the killer offer came sniffing back. Our lawyers are talking. Contracts are being drawn up. But the joy has been sucked out. It might go through, it might not. I can't get excited until the ink is dry. And that's why we might have an open house.

Beware the Closet

The other thing that's weird about selling an apartment is that you have to keep it super neat and clean all the time, which is not my nature. I'm more of a semi-neat and sorta-clean kind of person. But my real estate agent (who rocks!) insists that the place look like a model home, or in my case a model room. My studio essentially looks like no one lives here, but people do – two of us – in a 450 square foot apartment. All of our personal belongings are shoved into the closets, which are literally like cartoon closets filled to the brim with mountains of stuff. Move just one item and you could be buried in an avalanche of tennis equipment, snow boots, books and old purses.


Also, I thought of more things I love about NYC:
- Patisserie Claude on west 4th Street where Claude himself makes the most amazing croissants I've ever eaten.
- The Mud Coffee truck. I rarely get coffee there, but I love that there's a big orange truck parked up the block where I can get delicious coffee on the go.

"Chim Chim Cher-ee"

So I'm selling my apartment – the stress of which I can't even get into. But among the things I've had to do in order to make sure my lovely little studio is sellable is to test to see that the fireplace works – by having two chimney sweeps visit my apt. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a chimney sweep anymore. My friend at work kept telling me she pictured Dick Van Dyke from "Mary Poppins" coming to my place with a little soot smeared on his face and a skip in his step. The day of my appointment, the receptionist at the chimney place called to say that all her guys had called in sick because they'd partied too hard over Easter weekend. I wasn't aware that Easter was a big party holiday – but maybe it is among chimey sweeps. Anyway, they came the next day. The whole process took about 20 minutes and involved dropping a line with a brush attached to it down the chimney from the roof, then lighting a small fire in the fireplace to make sure the smoke went up. It did, thank god. The guys were no Dick Van Dyke and did not look like they were going to break into that "Chim Chim Cher-ee" song. But they were nice. And they let me take their picture.

Things I Love About NYC

Since I'm leaving in exactly one month, I've started to conciously notice things I love about the city. (Yep, I'm sorta being super-nostalgia girl, digging myself into an emotional hole, but that's me.) Here are some things I noticed/thought about yesterday.

1. The sun setting over the west side.
2. New sculptures that were installed in Bryant Park - I love that no matter how well you know the city, there is always something new.
3. Qwik Meal on 45th and 6th Ave. I haven't eaten there in ages, but it's a food cart where people will wait outside a half hour for the delicious meals - lamb over rice, chicken over rice, veggies over rice.
4. Riding my bike over the Manhattan Bridge
5. That I always know where I am. (Which is unlike L.A. where I am moving. During a recent trip I practically had a map of the city glued to my forehead.)

From the Past

Last night I got a call from my old friend, Jill. She lived in New York with me during our heyday - the days when were we in our early 20s, dating and staying out late, going to hear bands and not taking anything too seriously. Now she's married and lives in Minnesota with a husband and a cat a career she loves.

She told me it was huge that I was leaving - and I was so glad she did. It's true. This is the city where I grew up into an adult. It's where I became me.

Final Countdown

I moved to New York City when I was 22 years. Now I am a nearly 35. I am leaving my adopted home to return to California where I was born. I have mixed feelings about the choice. At the moment, I'm deceptively calm -- just waiting for a freak out.

I'll use this blog to track the ups and downs.