So yeah, where was I...

Approximately nine and a half months since my last blog post.  I could have gone through an entire pregnancy in that time.  But I did not.  Anyway, I am not sure if I remember how to do this so please bear with me.

It's not like I've had nothing on my mind, nothing to say.  It's just that I haven't been able to align my inspiration to gab with my opportunities to actually put fingers to keys.  Like the Colin Haye song says, "When I'm done (drinking coffee), I feel like talking.  Without you here, there is less to say."  I usually feel like writing something up as I'm on my way to work in the morning.  I tell myself I'm going to take twenty minutes when I reach my desk, but, inevitably, the work tends to converge on me upon arrival.  And then at 4 o'clock when I am having my tea and can maybe spare the time, I'm over it by then and feel only like checking in on my fantasy football team.  And yet we're 1-3.  Such is life, right?  Never the time to do what you want to do when you want to do it unless you have a Jerry Maguire moment and make time.

Speaking of tea, I discovered one of the finer teas I've ever tasted yesterday.  And it's bagged.  Trader Joe's Harvest Blend Herbal Tea with the fox on the box.  It's like drinking an autumn Yankee Candle (which I've also deployed, of course) out of a friggin' mug.  It's potpourri for your taste buds.  I'm having some now, actually.

Speaking of having less time to do all the things you want to do, I am re-reading a novel for maybe the second time in my life, "Juliet, Naked" by Nick Hornby.  It's fantastic, obviously, but I guess I felt that if I can only squeeze in 15 minutes a day before I collapse into unconsciousness, I might as well spare myself the burden of following an unfamiliar plot.

I've been thinking about New York a lot lately.  Given that we're wading into fall, it's no surprise that my mind should go there, but I haven't been skimming over the romantic, postcard images this time around.  I've been recalling the minute details of my New York, be they pleasant, bitter, or unscented.  I know I have bemoaned this before, but I find it interesting how New York, more than any other city, seems to inspire such feelings of personal ownership, whether a person has been there three weeks or thirty years.  Everybody has their New York.  Some of the things I've been going back to...the sight of fish guts being hosed off the sidewalk on the lower east side as I walked to the public school where I was a reading tutor for a semester, the kid there, Adam, who was kind of a misfit in the class, but whom I kind of bonded with...the seeping self-consciousness I felt most of the time I was living there..the music I discovered while I was there and the exact place and circumstances where it affected me most...the first time I encountered East Coast snobbery in the form of an asshat who scoffed at me for wearing the so very unbecoming shoes known as flip-flops...the way my dorm was set up as three towers surrounding a central courtyard and the way it was like a prison riot (in a fun way) when we were all watching something in unison like the 2001 election..the things I wish I would have done differently...and the Chinese food, oh God, the Chinese food...

I think that's all I got for today.  But I'm back baby.