Lust

There are words I'd like to write but am too distracted by the windows shaking from the wind. There is a blizzard in the Midwest, my darling Midwest, and warm, spring rain here. I'm missing Chicago, wishing I could afford to visit for a few days around Christmas. Alas, adulthood will not permit this.

A very close friend of mine has just become engaged and while I'm very happy for her it is an odd feeling. Most of Jon's friends are married, have children, are getting divorced or what have you and most of mine are still figuring out their lives. But I suppose we are all growing up, slowly, but surely. It is that forever feeling of being stalled where I am; waiting for real life to begin, to start law school and a family. Though if I stop to think about it, I already have a little family. Jon, Keats and I. Small, but happy. I'm not sure if this is adulthood or pretending but for right now I am content.

Will it be

It is Saturday night and I sit here rewatching a show that I was too young to understand the first time around. It involves a creek. I say no more.

Having officially entered 9 to 5 hood this week, I welcome doing little. The morning was spent sipping coffee with Jon, finding more nonfiction on the American Revolution--my new favorite obsession-- and buying a tiny bunch of wildflowers from the farmers market. Keats discovered he is able to jump on the kitchen counter which is not at all surprising but rather disheartening as it was the last place to put any valuable object he might get his paws on. Alas, he is unstopable.

The new job is something I have not made my mind up about yet but it doesn't exactly look promising. We will see. My mantra is 18 months. 18 months and then we will be far, far away. Waiting and waiting.

Peppermint

Washington, D.C.

It is deeply gloomy outside and while normally I like nothing better than this sort of weather with coffee and a good book, today it only matches my mood. There are so many things that have become uncertain and I fear that my sounding board, Jon, has become tired of my verbal hand wringing. I've never been very good at friendships. For whatever reason I can never seem to hang on to close friends. And while the people I've met in the city have been lovely, for the most part, I wouldn't say any are true close friends. The kind you can call up anytime and have over for coffee, do nothing but talk and be comfortable in one anther's presence. I'm more than lucky to have found my wonderful companion but, sometimes just sometimes, I ache for the sort of conversations you can only have with a best girl friend.

I've been burying myself in studying and books. About France in WWII, the American Revolution, love letters of poets. I'm searching for that feeling of being so overwhelmed with a text that you cannot see beyond the page. It has been too long since I've felt that. And the days are long. Long and seemingly endless yet somehow they bleed into one another with the weather as the only demarcation of time. The yearning for elsewhere is so strong that it causes me to lose my breath. I feel so unattached, like I may float away. That might be nice.

Le Soleil

I'm always so full of words and when I open my mouth there is nothing. Some important things have been decided. I've withdrawn from Pratt, gone on several job interviews, and will be applying to law school for the fall of 2012. The for ever academic is becoming the esquire. I am thrilled and terrified and full of logic games.

So to ignore life for a bit, Jon and I departed briefly for the Bahamas. Not typically our type of vacation, Jon the albino wonder boy and me the dark loving lady, but it was interesting. We are both more than excited for D.C. in a week. Talk of buying our own house there, of the cherry blossoms we perpetually miss in New York but will be sure to see in our capitol, and the beauty that is an actual campus. So many changes in such a short amount of time. Keats is excited too.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

These past few days I've walked miles, had no thoughts, and yearned for thunderstorms. Storm, now, storm.

Mornings

This past Saturday was my 22nd birthday and I must say 22 is looking better than ever. Jon planned a lovely day of gardens and chocolate and too much incredible italian food. I am lucky to have spent the past four birthdays with this man.

There have been lots of changes, seemingly small, going on here lately. I've been wary of talking about them as it seems I am fickle (I am) and unfocused (I am not). What it comes down to is, simply put, more schooling. No more New York. Hopes of grandeur. Places I never thought I would be, we would be.

September it is my turn to take Jon out on the town, thought not our town. For my wonderful man's 30th birthday we are heading to D.C.! A trip full of high hopes and history. Have already found a kitschy hotel smack dab in the middle of the action and am planning on making friends with the Lincoln memorial and sampling all the cupcakes at Georgetown Bakery. We are both hoping this trip is a harbinger of things to come. Fingers crossed for a reason to relocate in the near future.

It is difficult to have so much up in the air. Am up for a job that would make the next two years substantially easier though incredibly busy. Working full time, studying nonstop, all the while attempting to obtain my masters in two years. Truthfully, I'm excited. I am not built for boredom.

Onward

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Having left behind Jon for this summer trip, we've (I've) decided to take another one this winter. Two weeks: Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Italy. I'm very much looking forward to the famous coffee in Vienna, the mountains, the chocolate, the mountains, the mountains, the opera, all of Italy but particularly Venice, and the mountains.

Having grown up in several places, none of them exceptionally hilly, I've had a fascination with being up. I hate heights, don't get me wrong, but I love the feeling of being high above something, looking down and knowing so much is going on but feeling so removed from it. I don't know why, but it calls to me.

I've been thinking about living lately. In the most basic sense; where to live. I've always assumed I'd end up back in Chicago but lately I've been questioning that. Why not Virginia? Why not Georgia? Besides my utter distaste for all that is above 75 degrees, I find the south charming. Wrap around porches and lemonade. Flowers and tree lined streets. But I wonder if this is just a result of being too long cooped up in a city. Brooklyn has become one of my favorite places in the world but sometimes city livin gets to a gal. Always longing for elsewhere, sigh.