Quarter life crisis

It's almost funny how fast life can change. One minute you're riding high on the hog, a bank teller in cheese country, making a modest living, paying your bills relatively on time and saving for your dreams. Then in a flash you're taking a leap on a better paying job and less bills, only to lose said job in a week's time and find yourself moving back in with your parents, sharing a bed with your teen sisters, with the ever-daunting realization that you're 25 and yet again applying to be a waitress with your borderline useless English degree and wondering if you can handle the stinking suffocation/choking despair of life's nasty twists and turns.

Well here's the scoop. The low-down, vanilla:

I am done. So done and over this. Since the age of fourteen, these are the jobs I have held:

Sheet folder at a bath store
Babysitter extraordinaire
Pizza dough roller and breadstick maker
Slave to the oldies, serving country fresh grits
Sub sandwich creator
Stocker of arts and crafts
Wine and cheese connoisseur
Credit card pusher
Answering phones for a health insurance company
Greeting hotel guests, enjoy your stay
Swiveling through sports bar crowds
Scrubbing floors, Cinderell-ey, Cinderell-ey
Bank teller, would you like that direct deposited?

And guess what? At the ripe old age of fourteen while folding 100 thread count sheets, I remember looking out the window at the highway, the surrounding outlet mall stores, the fields with nothing to them, and promising myself, even then that I would go to college, I would make it out of this town, I would be somebody.

So I am leaving. I am going to attempt to sell my earthly belongings, scrounge what I can and get to NY. Now. Not later. This vagabond can't wait tables another minute in small-town, Michigan. Unless it's in New York to support my art; I can't and I won't.

So goodbye, Fowlerville. I can't say I missed you when I left at 18, and I won't say I'll miss you now. Thank you for my upbringing, my roots, but I bid you an altogether un-saddened adieu.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

I apologize profusely dear readers, for I have been negligent. So much so, that I fear I may have lost some of you. But negligence no more! I am back. From many things in fact... back from my writing hiatus, back from New York and back in my home state(for a short time).
Such changes, before and behind me have been nothing short of bittersweet. A piece of my heart stayed behind in Wisconsin when I left and will remain there for all my days to come. Another part of my heart grew, maybe even to an abnormal bursting point like the Grinch's, however, on my most recent trip to my beloved city, NY.
I have known for some time that New York is where my soul belongs, but after spending a week there apartment hunting, oh let me tell you: New York was specially made for me. Or I was made for New York. Whichever. I am back to regale you mere mid-westerner's about my New York.

Oh there were Michael Jackson impersonators dancing in front of City Hall
Poet's in suspenders typing on type-writers on the Brooklyn Bridge
Mango's being carved into precious edible flowers on the sidewalk
Pizza with sauce so delectable that you could pour it in a glass and gulp it down
Teenagers singing gospel in the subways
Breakfast to be had at Tiffany's. Oh and did Tiffany and I ever bond over bagels.
Bagpipes bellowing in Central Park
Models strutting their stuff, with picture-perfect Vogue smiles amidst their cameramen
Languages I'd like to know rolling off tongues of people I have seen only in J.Crew ads
Guitarists strumming on a swaying subway car and murmuring, "Gracias, gracias," with a tipped hat and a bow
Strapping young lads in their crisp white uniforms strolling Battery Park for Fleet Week--Yumm-o
Cupcakes so decadent that I now understand why Suri Cruise is always eating them, lucky bitch
Impromptu parades busting out in Little Italy
the giant toy soldier greeting at F.A.O Schwarz, which turns out, not just a kids store
And then me, walking serenely back to the subway after a frozen peanut-butter hot chocolate at Serendipity's thinking, can this be love? Can this be happiness?
Oh but it can.

And here I am, back to my roots for a summer of family bonding and nanny diaries before my next big trek into the great unknown.

Don't worry, I'll keep you posted.