Sadness Lamp

I recently googled the phrase "Sadness Lamp". Obviously, it's a great band name, but my reason for the search had nothing to do with that. Before I get into my real thought process, here are some Google image results for "Sadness Lamp":

A crying ghost that also happens to be a lamp

A sad man in 1862

A not-exactly-sad cat/lamp combo

Some girl poking a giant doughboy (Not all search results are entirely relevant)

Whatever this is

A pretty realistic rendering of Jennifer Aniston (the artist is named Sadness, I think?)

What I was actually hoping to find was something more like this:

This is a lamp designed by a company called Uplift Technologies and its purpose is literally to improve the mood of its user. A lot of people with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) use these lamps as a defense against depression during the winter months. 

It's hard to believe that staring into a light could actually improve your mood, especially when you are doing it the way this lady is:

This looks like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard...if she actually cared
about curing her depression.

But now that I am about to enter my first real New York winter, I am wondering if this is a fashion statement I might have to make soon. Since daylight savings began, darkness starts to descend on Manhattan around 3:30 PM. In other parts of the city, this may not be the case, but because of the towering buildings, midtown is basically shrouded in an evil shadow by mid-afternoon.

I already feel it affecting my mood. I am losing patience and feeling lethargic. I am ready to bathe in the 10,000 lux of fluorescent light any day now.

Not only am I experiencing a new level of darkness, but now I am expected to dress the part. The first day that the weather got even slightly nippy, I watched a good number of seasoned New Yorkers dawn the following winter necessity:

While it may look like one, this is not a harbinger of death. It is a down coat designed for maximum warmth. This article of clothing is something I never really saw before coming to New York, but it seems like a really aggressive defense against being cold. Every single woman in New York City has this coat, and with the readiness with which they began wearing them this fall, I am nervous that they know something I don't. 

I'll keep you posted, but I'm pretty sure I'm not ready, physically or emotionally, for a New York winter. You know who is though?

This weirdly furry horse. 

Progressively Married at Twenty-Two

“So, you’re married at twenty-two? Why? That seems pretty young.”

This question, before several other logical ones, was the first asked on a phone interview for a nanny position in Austin, Texas back in the fall of 2011. I had just gotten married, and I was looking for transitional work in-between a disappointing stint at Anthropologie and what I assumed would be my big break. To be fair, this mother probably had little-to-no experience with conducting a professional interview, but nonetheless, the question she asked was jarring. Immediately, I was in the position of having to defend a decision that seemed to have nothing to do with my qualifications as a nanny.

I felt slightly electrocuted by this question, but when I think about where she was coming from, I mostly get it. This mom was reading my Care.com profile, saw that I got married right out of college, and suddenly she was picturing me with long fingernails and an ankle-length denim skirt. She’s imagining me teaching her daughter the dangers of book-reading and that belief in dinosaurs is an evil akin to murder. 

Needless to say, I did not get the job. It was at this time that I realized that I was going to need a pre-packaged defense, and whatever it was needed to make me sound as normal as possible. Since moving to New York and starting a job where I talk to new people every day, I am asked the married-at-twenty-two question on an almost-daily basis. Usually people ask it with a face that looks like they just ate a bug. A preemptive response has not really formed yet for me, and it usually goes something like, “Yeah, I know. It’s weird. I mean, I don’t even own a long denim skirt. Wait. I mean, I do, but it’s calf-length. Anyway…and we dated for a long time…and I’m not saying I recommend it for everyone, or anyone even, but you know. It’s just like…”

It also doesn’t help that, at twenty-three-years-old, I look way younger than my age. I don’t know what exactly happened, but at the age of thirteen, my body was like I’m just going to camp out here until you’re thirty, and at that point I’ll just skip ahead to about eighty-three (I’m assuming this is what is going to happen, and I’m terrified). When people ask me why I got married so young, they might also be wondering if it was difficult for me to plan a wedding while teething or if I had my blankey with me on our honeymoon.

But I digress…

I’ve had a pretty long time to process this whole married-at-twenty-two question, and the more I think about it, the more I wonder why I even have to answer it at all. I am supremely proud of my marriage. My husband is brilliant, loyal, strong, patient, hilarious, handsome as a Disney prince, and he legitimately enjoys watching Project Runway with me. Through the six years that we dated, our relationship grew in maturity on a foundation of trust and patience. In terms of my decision to marry him, I am nothing but confident.

Don’t we seem confident? By the way, the thirteen-year-old boy is me and the smoldering gentlemen is my husband. Also, we don’t usually dress this way, but we wish we did.

Throughout our first year of marriage, it has become more and more clear that there exists a kind of quasi-prejudice against women who marry out of college. It’s not so strong that it keeps us from getting work (unless you want to be a nanny for that one lady’s kids, I guess) or that it infringes on any basic human rights, but it is enough to make me, and others like me, feel sort of dismissed.

I was reflecting on these feelings one day when my sister sent me an op-ed piece written by a woman in a similar situation. Her name is Lauren Ambler and she is also married at the ripe age of twenty-two. She titles her piece, I’m Married Young and I’m Ashamed of It, which struck me initially as a tongue-and-cheek way of saying some of the same things that I had been thinking. I thought this girl and I were going to relate, and I would give her a big high-five by way of the comments-section.

Tragically, Lauren Ambler and I do not exactly relate. Feel free to check out her article. Having married her boyfriend under unique circumstances (he needed a visa to stay in the country), she is definitely not exactly like me, but in many ways she is. Like Ambler, I never fantasized as a child about my wedding or even about a husband. I also agree that seeing marriage as a goal is dangerous for women on both an individual and ultimately larger scale. I certainly understand feeling the need to convince my single friends that I am not going to fall asleep if we go get margaritas (I might, but I just have a really strong tequila response).

I do sympathize with some of Ambler’s hesitations about the institution of marriage. We easily recall a time when most women in America married at young ages (a large percentage, as early as nineteen-years-old), never to work towards goals outside of their own homes. If these women did work, it was to bide their time as they prayed against spinsterhood. Homemaking was revered as a woman’s great American duty. While I see absolutely nothing wrong with stay-at-home moms (I know several and they crush it 24/7), I am happy to live in a world with options.

Where I differ most with Ambler, apart from the fact that I totally disagree on her stance that marriage should be open, is when she calls herself a “child bride”. This is the thing that we millenials are constantly criticized for: that we prolong our childhood in a way that makes us helpless even at an age where we should be considered adults. I am not a child. My married friends of the same age are, by no means, children. We are adults who have made a choice, and we are sticking by it.

Now, that being said, I do not think this is for everyone. If it exists, I will not be joining the Coalition to Increase Young Marriages (It doesn’t exist. I just googled it). I think getting married young is largely a mistake for many for the same reasons that some would assume it is a mistake for me. We all know the potential damage that this could cause for a woman. She could drop all of her dreams. She could lose all of her friends. She could decide he’s a skeevy dirt-bag and suffer through a senseless divorce only to find that she has no support left. This kind of thing really does happen all of the time, and it is a shame.

But certainly this is not a uniform fate for every woman who marries young. Certainly there are those of us who feel logically compelled to make this decision based on our lengthy commitment, our unfaltering love for our husbands, and our determination to pursue our passions alongside the ones we love, not despite them.

You might call us the exception to the rule, but I don’t think I even like the rule to begin with. American women are far more progressive than that. Being “single” and being a “spinster” are no longer synonymous terms. You can be a mom and an astronaut and a tattoo artist and a grad student four times over, and in all of that, you don’t have to marry anyone, and everyone is (or should be) totally cool with that. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who went before us and awakened the world to a new realm of legitimate options for women.

All I ask is that you at least consider the legitimacy of my option as well. Could we be progressive enough to reappropriate marriage-after-college to be a respectable choice instead of an enslaving fun-sucker? Are we that radical yet?

It probably isn’t entirely fair to appeal to your sense of rebellion. Use that revolutionary instinct to tackle far more important women’s issues, like promoting economic justice and getting Lindsay Lohan back to her Parent Trap days.

Just let me, in all of my marriedness, come with you.

Oculus Reparo: How Breaking My Glasses Opened My Eyes

It happened in an instant, and my heart sank. I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye.

After three years with these particular frames, I stepped on my glasses, and they will never be fixed. I have been a four-eyed-freak for ten years now, and in that time I have worn four different sets of spectacles, not a single one needing a repair. September 7, 2012 is a dark day in my eyewear history. Here's how it went down:

I was getting ready for the day when I heard what sounded like a hippo karaoke contest coming from the ceiling. My upstairs neighbors are consistently crazy loud, as in, the bathroom literally shakes sometimes when they are doing whatever it is they do up there. We've politely let them know, but nothing has changed. In addition to that frustration, our super, who is the person who normally fields these concerns, is NEVER around. I went to go knock on his door, which only confirmed what I already knew. In that irritating moment, I decided to go ahead and call the building manager. I made a b-line for my phone and in that focused process, I heard something crack beneath my feet. I had left my glasses on the floor earlier when I was doing my makeup. The hinge had snapped and the left side had been severed.

So obviously this is the fault of our upstairs neighbors/our super. Not mine, right?

Wrong. It's my fault, and I can say that now, but in my initial anger, it was anything but my own fault. As I began to realize what had just happened to my most cherished accessory, I really did go through a kind of quasi-grieving process. The most recognizable stage was Denial. I kept putting the broken piece back where it should go as though it would just realize that it belonged there. I wished so badly that Hermione Granger would come over to say, "Oculus Reparo!", but she never did.

I rushed them to the glasses hospital (Flatbush Optical) where they gave me the tragic news: the damage done to my spectacles could not be undone. I had them explain it to me about eight times, and each time, it became more and more real. I will never wear these glasses again.

Taken the first day I wore my now-deceased frames.

Taking away my glasses is, for me, much like taking out one of my eyeballs. They are so much a part of my physical appearance that even I struggle to recognize myself without them. More than that, though, I realize that my glasses have been the physical representation of how I want to be perceived.

I caught myself saying it when I was sorting through my feelings aloud:

"Now people will have to actually talk to me to realize I'm smart!" 

Wow. You're thinking, what an opposite-of-smart thing to say.

I know...

The thing is, I could probably have done my life without glasses. Things would have been slightly fuzzy, and I might have needed to walk up to street signs to read them, but my vision was not really that bad when I first got glasses. It's the wearing of the glasses that I believe has slowly destroyed my vision.

8th grade was the first time I ever got an eye exam, and I remember the optometrist was like, "I mean, I guess you could wear glasses..." I walked into school that day and a boy in my social studies class told me I looked like a beautiful scientist. And he was right. From that day forward, glasses and I were an item.

I don't have any pictures of my first pair, but these are my second pair of glasses, worn throughout most of high school.

I know what you are thinking...

Person who does not need glasses that badly + Glasses = Hipster. 

That's fair, but consider for a moment the context for my first pair of frames. I began my glasses journey during a confusing time in our American history. A few years before I started wearing them, Rachael Leigh Cook had to take off her glasses in the movie She's All That for the world to discover that she was truly beautiful. On the other hand, Daria was sporting large, animated, Carrie Donovanesque frames like an absolute pro. 

My third pair of glasses, worn through my freshman year of college. Also pictured: a makeshift headlamp and overly-plucked eyebrows.

So while I would not say I thought glasses would make me look cool, I knew that they would make me look smart. It's still not even entirely clear to me why that is. What scientific study shows a definitive link between vision problems and brilliance? If intelligence is any measure of the brain's health, wouldn't we also expect an intelligent person to have a stellar occipital lobe? Who started this glasses-makes-you-smarter nonsense?

Regardless, since I began wearing glasses under this shallow reasoning, breaking my glasses for the first time has been kind of an eye-opening experience (pun so very much intended). While my worries are different in my twenties than they were in my teens, the way I am perceived is still pretty high up on my list. When I think about why that is, it becomes clear to me that starting a career is a lot like being in middle school. You begin at the bottom rung and you'd give anything to be up there with the executives (the metaphorical popular kids). When we talk about kids trying to fit in, we often call it an "identity" problem, but in the workplace it's been recently termed an issue of "branding". Whatever. It's the same thing, and my glasses are a huge part of my brand. It's the exact same thing as having a Lisa Frank backpack. Middle school and entry-level jobs -- same thing. 

Now that I've come to this realization, you're probably wondering if I'm going to stop wearing glasses. The answer is NO. WAY. They are more a part of me than this lesson that I learned, plus they keep me from having crazy eyes.

Glasses keep eyes like this from scaring your children.

The woman at Flatbush Optical said we could use the lenses for my next pair. It's kind of like organ donation for eyewear: the death of my glasses could mean another pair's life.

I understand that most of you, despite learning a valuable lesson about identity, are still grieving the loss of my glasses. Please accept this final picture that I took the day before I tragically destroyed them as well as this music video of Sarah McLachlan's "I Will Remember You". 

Little did I know that this weird baby doll face would go down in history.

Be a Nerd for Something

I have learned a lot of things from my husband in the eight years that I have known him. Since being married, I feel like that learning process has been on hyper-drive. Today we have been married for a full year, and I would like to talk about one of my favorite lessons he has ever taught me.

"Oh, hey guys! We're already learning so much!"

Be a Nerd for Something: A Lesson from My Husband, Daniel
by: His Wife, Christy

The audience of Drum Corp International's live-streamed World Championship is different than most human beings would ever imagine. To be fair, most human beings have probably never heard of Drum Corp International. Whenever Daniel announced that he had bought tickets to this event at the Union Square 14 Regal Cinema, I was certain it would be the two of us alone with the projectionist. I obliged, laughing at his precious decision to purchase advance-tickets to something so obscure.

Color me surprised when I entered a theater as full as any summer blockbuster midnight premiere. The 4.5 hours I spent in that theater (You are not reading that wrong. FOUR. AND. A. HALF.) were some of the strangest of my life as I immersed myself into this off-the-wall subculture of adult band nerds.

Here is my tweet about this selfless accomplishment.

Now, if you don't know what Drum Corp International is, you are the 99%. If you were in marching band at some point in your life, you might be familiar, but the rest of us are typically clueless about the passionate world of DCI. Basically it's a marching band competition and it's kind of a big deal, I guess.

Bands (or corps) from all over the nation comprised of high-schoolers and college students perform shows based on a theme. These groups practice and perform all summer long until they achieve total precision and are ready to compete in the DCI finals. There are a few bands that have a huge following (for a marching band, I guess) and there are some other bands that only the students' moms know about. 

Now, if you are reading this and you don't know what marching band is, you might be from Cuba or something (For some reason, I'm just assuming that they don't have marching band in Cuba. That might not be entirely fair). Here is a highlight reel from the DCI website that might give you some kind of indication to as to the showmanship expected from these guys:

The whole experience for me was at first just a little odd. I had to come to terms with the fact that these people were all here in a crowded movie theater to watch marching band shows and not Batman or something. I used to be a choir girl myself, but I'm not sure I would have dedicated this kind of time and money to see groups perform a selection of madrigals for almost five hours, even if they were dressed like this:

A member of the Blue Knights color guard

It all became especially real whenever it was time for a group called The Madison Scouts to perform. All of a sudden this audience was transformed from a collection of well-educated band directors and enthusiasts into a squealing, convulsing, elated group of pre-teens that you might find at a One Direction concert. It was pandemonium.

I heard the woman in front of us announce that these guys were "SO sexy, ohmygod", and I didn't have the heart to remind her that some of them might be sixteen-years-old. I looked over to Daniel to laugh about this absolute Scout Mania when I noticed a glimmer of utter joy in his eyes. He was into this. While he might not join the woman in the row in front of us in announcing their sex appeal, Daniel was legitimately excited to be at Regal Cinemas amongst people who were absolutely nerding out over these guys with feathers on their heads.

At first, I felt a little embarrassed. Up until this point, I had been making fun of all of these people in my mind, but marching band is actually super impressive. Nick Cannon wasn't just in the movie "Drumline" for the paycheck. What these guys do is nothing short of superhuman, and my husband, my best friend, actually used to be a part of this.

Now, tell me he doesn't look awesome in this picture!

Despite the fact that it requires so much skill, marching band has kind of always been a classically nerdy thing to do. The people in marching band, however, swear by it. They are a tight-knit community who get jazzed about metronomes and drum majors and all of those things that the rest of us just can't possibly understand. To be called a "band nerd" might as well be the same as "rock star".

Daniel has never been ashamed to say that he is a nerd. I think it is his favorite description for himself. He is a constant seeker of information. Reading is like breathing for him in a way that puts even the most avid readers to shame. He is twenty-three-years-old and still reads books with dragons on the covers and he uses every opportunity to teach me something new about dinosaurs. He starts almost every sentence with "I was listening to a podcast the other day and.." or "There was this article the other day that talked about..." He watches television shows no one has ever heard of. He comes out on top in fantasy sports without watching a single game. He has played Magic the Gathering numerous times in his adult life. 

A parody meme made by one of Daniel's roommates.

He's a nerd by almost anyone's standards. 

But Daniel is the best kind of nerd. He is the kind of nerd that delights in several nerd communities. Like his time in marching band, Daniel has always surrounded himself with people of unabashed interests and passions. When you meet Daniel, he wants you to talk about what you're excited about. He wants to laugh with you about your specialized knowledge and encourage you in expressing those things that make you most excited. To Daniel, whatever it is that makes you absolutely nerd-out is the coolest thing in the world. 

Daniel expressively encouraging a friend to pursue their passions

Before I met Daniel, cool was my highest pursuit. To be fair, I was a teenager and that was probably what we all cared about most, but not Daniel. That has never been his aim. As someone riddled with self-consciousness, Daniel is the most refreshing thing that could have ever happened to me. On a daily basis, Daniel encourages me to do the things I love despite what anyone might think as a result. Let's be honest: this entire blog would not be happening without the incessant requests of my husband. 

It dawned on me in that movie theater, as plume-headed men and women trumpeted militantly before my eyes, that Daniel was inviting me into this nerd-dom and that this was an incredibly intimate and trusting gesture. Not only that, but by marrying me, Daniel has invited me to the rest of his passionately nerdy days, and since he chose me, he must consider me a nerd as well (and if you are friends with Dan, trust me, he thinks you are a nerd too). 

Look! We're both nerds.

As Daniel has imparted this knowledge in our marriage, I hope to impart it to anyone who is reading this: Be a nerd for something. Dust off that accordion, dance even if you're terrible, make a fool of yourself in an incredibly public way. Love that thing that you love in a way that makes you a little bit eccentric.

To conclude, I would like to end with Daniel's hands-down favorite story from the Bible. It comes from 2 Samuel chapter 6, and it's going to be my Cliffs Notes version, so here goes: 

So David (King of Israel/protagonist in this story) is super stoked about something great that God has done. He gets so excited, in fact, that he dances around in a linen ephod (basically his underwear) as a way of praising the Lord. This girl named Michal is watching this scene unfold, and she is not impressed. When David comes by her later, she says something super snarky:

"How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!" 

This girl is not happy. But David goes on to explain that he was doing this as a celebration for God and he says something incredible:

"I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes" 

David does not care that he looks flat-crazy. He is nerding out for what he believes in. Let us all be as undignified as David is for the Lord and as humiliated in our own eyes as Daniel is for Jurassic Park (and the Lord). 

Nerds

IKEA and Other Letdowns

You know this scene from 500 Days of Summer?



How fun does this look? Don't you wish you were as quirky and carefree as these two?

Well, the other day when Daniel and I were planning a trip to IKEA, this is pretty much exactly how I imagined everything going. We would run around the store without any consideration for other customers (in fact, in our minds we would pity their lack of freedom), we would pretend that all of the model rooms were our home, and Daniel would say something clever like, "Darling, I don't know how to tell you this, but there is a Chinese family in our bathroom," and we would laugh and laugh. It all seemed so doable.

Believe it or not, that is not how our trip went. How could it? I'm not Zooey Deschanel, and we were not there for a date. We were there to make serious decisions about serious pieces of furniture for our very serious apartment. Now, I've had different experiences at IKEA, and I'll admit that it can be fun as long as you are just browsing. However, when you're there to get business done, it is like walking through each circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno. Each section is a new decision which brings along a new level of stress, and at certain points, you begin to wonder if there is even a way out.

A Map of Dante's Hell

Map of IKEA. It's a different layout, but you can't deny the similarities. 

What broke me was when we were deciding on curtains. We've just moved into a new apartment, and the view from our windows is of barbed wire and about fifty other apartments. I want to get our windows covered, like, yesterday. When we got to the window section, we had already made about 1,000 different trivial decisions and there were crying babies and messy beds everywhere and all I could think about was that $1 cinnamon roll at the end of the store that seemed so far away. By the time Daniel told me that he hadn't measured the windows (to be fair, neither had I. I would never have thought of that), I had completely forgotten how to think. All of the bright patterns and umlauts had finally broken my brain, and I let out a strange grunting noise and let my body collapse onto a FÖRHÖJA.

What made this trip even more difficult was that I had this romanticized idea of what a visit to IKEA  should look like. Obviously, I didn't think it would be exactly like 500 Days of Summer, but I at least had a strong misconception that it would be some romantic experience. While the whole notion that life is not like the movies is absolutely a cliche at this point, I am the type of person who constantly forgets that. I do this a lot, more often than you would think, and I am always disappointed.

Here is a short list of experiences from movies that set me up for disappointment:

1. Painting our apartment (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)

Expectation: We're going to paint love notes on the walls and splatter paint onto each other's faces without making a mess and we will laugh and laugh and laugh!
Reality: We paint in a room with no air-conditioning and I sweat like a faucet.

2. Riding the subway (Rent)

Expectation: I am going to love this! There are going to be tons of interesting people, and there are those rails that you can hold onto, and we're all going to dance and sing and laugh and laugh and laugh!
Reality: There are rats everywhere and it can take you an hour to travel seven miles and sometimes it is so crowded that you have to basically lay your entire body on total strangers.

3. Watching Fireworks (The Sandlot)

Expectation: The entire sky above me will be lit up and I will have a hotdog in one hand and a vintage Coca Cola in the other and, in our amazement, we will all laugh and laugh and laugh!
Reality: There are some dim lights in the distance that are vaguely colorful and I have to pee.

4. New York Weather (You've Got Mail)*

Expectation: It will be crisp and cool year round and I will look adorable in my coat-and-snuggly-scarf combo and I will own a charming children's bookstore and all of my co-workers and I will laugh and laugh and LAUGH!!!!
Reality: Sometimes it is so hot and muggy that my face feels like soup. Also, I don't own a bookstore.

*To be fair, this movie is mostly set in the fall and winter. For some reason, I just assumed that New York weather was always perfect.



People are pretty negative towards having too many expectations, and I think they are generally right. Someone wise has probably said this to you at one point in your life:

Expectations are premeditated resentments (or disappointments).

If no one has said that to you, just pretend I made it up. But here is another quote that I think I really did make up:

Disappointments are like baby carrots; They will almost never kill you.

I made this image so you could pin it on Pinterest. The sunset and butterfly indicate its high level of inspiration.

Yep. That's my quote. You can tell because it basically makes no sense, but let's pretend for a second that it does.

I would argue that if expectations lead to disappointments, maybe that isn't the worst thing that could ever happen to you. Just like baby carrots, disappointments are gross. You feel kind of cheated out of something great, and you've got a terrible taste in your mouth. Baby carrots, however, will almost never kill you (unless you have an allergy which I assume is rare, or God forbid, you choke on one) and the same is true of our disappointments. At the end of the day, baby carrots aren't the end of the world, and some people will actually tell you that they are good for you.

I look back on our IKEA experience and I kind of love it. It is true, I probably should not have expected it to be a romantic comedy, but that's part of why it's so great. I remember that day and I think about how distraught I felt and how awesome Daniel was at taking care of me. At the time, we didn't laugh and laugh and laugh, but when we think about IKEA now, we pretty much can't stop laughing.

The same is true of all of my other "disappointments". No, the weather in New York isn't the perfect chill I had always dreamed of, and yes, sometimes someone sits next to you on the subway and decides to clip their fingernails, but it's almost better this way. From the ashes of expectations comes a sense of humor about things. Sometimes I need my idealistic world to be rocked to find a realistic sense of appreciation.

Some people can skip these steps altogether and just enjoy things immediately. These people are better than me, but I kind of like my system.

Also, sometimes your expectations actually come to fruition, and that can be pretty great too.

Despite the sweat, we actually did end up painting love notes on our apartments walls

Waiting on a Friend

Today I am going to talk about something that I think is true for a lot of people that move to New York City, or any new city for that matter. Let's start this one out with a song.

This is the Rolling Stones' "Waiting on a Friend", and it is basically my life story right now. Here we have Mick Jagger standing in a doorway watching some ladies pass by. He's all "ooo ooo oo OO ooooo", but you know that is just code for something really heavy that's weighing on his heart. Then he starts singing and you eventually hear him repeating over and over, I'm not waiting on a lady. I'm just waiting on a friend. Then it hits you. Mick Jagger isn't waiting on a lady...he's waiting on a friend.

You and me both, Mick. I wouldn't mind if that friend was a lady, by the way. I'm not picky. I'd probably prefer it.

Let me explain. Daniel and I have been living in New York for almost two months, and we have been having a blast. We've been to museums and zoos and parks and musicals and Coney Island. We are a daily audience for an inconsistently impressive dance show on the Q train. We've eaten cupcakes, ridden on ferries, walked by historic landmarks, sighted celebrities (Clinton Kelly...I had just been watching What Not To Wear before I saw him). This place is great. Listen to Alicia Keys. She's not kidding.

But here's the thing about moving to New York that I hadn't completely realized until we actually got here: when we moved, our friends didn't move with us.

This revelation probably isn't as shocking to those who have moved before, but I don't have a lot of experience with moving, so give me a break. From the time I was born, I lived at the same address in Helotes Park Estates in the same bedroom with the same bunny light switch for nineteen years. The first time I really moved away was college, but I was still in Texas and when I got there they had something called Welcome Week where they basically assigned us lifelong friends. Thanks for the bridesmaid, Baylor bubble!

My wonderful friend Lara and I, freshman year at Baylor.

On my wedding day. The comparison seriously makes me cry. 

From there, Daniel and I got married and we moved to Austin where most of our friends were anyway. I got used to a lifestyle of going out to dinners, having occasional sleepovers, checking in on each other, having real in-depth conversations, and simply doing life with my best friends. I was spoiled.

These people spoiled me rotten.

Now we've moved to New York, a city where I know only a handful of people and none of these contacts are preexisting best friends. This situation has NEVER happened to me. And I mean for that sentence to sound as dramatic as it looks.

When I think about how I even accumulated the friends I have in my life, I realize that I have mostly made new friends with a few older ones by my side. Then I have to think about the first time in my life that I made a friend which was probably in pre-school, and that was probably the result of Tinker Toys or some other friend-inducing toy of the early 90s. Kids are awesome at making friends. 

I know I am getting ahead of myself, and I am absolutely making it look like I am totally socially inept (which I'm pretty sure isn't the case). Daniel and I only just recently joined a church and while I have a job, we haven't started taping yet, so I haven't been around any of those folks. These are very logical places to meet people, and I probably will and everything will probably be more than okay.

The problem (as always) is my expectations. I am seeking in strangers what was cultivated through years of experience with my close friends. I want discussion and honesty and accountability. I want to skip right on through the politeness and primary tension of meeting someone to true, real friendship. 

That's not how life works. I know that. I know I am being selfish in not wanting the work of starting new friendships. The truth is I have been pretty fortunate to have had such great relationships despite my propensity towards over-thinking absolutely everything. And it's not like I am looking to replace any of them. They are still there, though miles away, whenever I need a dose of thoroughly-marinated, real conversation.

Still, as Mick Jagger says:

Don't need a whore
I don't need no booze
Don't need a virgin priest
But I need someone I can cry to
...
I'm just waiting on a friend

My thoughts exactly, Mick. Who needs virgin priests when you've got friends?