Vacancies

Fun fact: if you are a married lady, and if you have a blog, and if you abandon said blog for prolonged periods of time somewhere in the vicinity of your 29th birthday and/or two-year wedding anniversary, there is just nothing for it:

EVERYONE will think you are pregnant.

Which is to say, after a certain amount of time without posting, each day of silence brings the increasing awareness that you guys (or whatever's left of you) are lingering out there, wondering about the silence, and speculating as to the state of my uterus. (Which is VACANT, by the way, so let's not have any nonsense.)

At which point, in my more logical moments, I decide that perhaps the thing to do is just wait it out -- until the reasonable time for a bun-in-the-oven announcement has passed, and it's starting to get a little weird, and the speculation amongst my remaining readers evolves from wondering whether I might be pregnant to wondering whether I might be dead.

Maybe next time.

In the interim, though, many exciting things have been happening -- not a one of which has to do with baby-making. For instance:

- I created an entire race of modern, mythical beasts.
- I did this, and it kind of went viral.
- I completed my first manuscript revision.
- AHEM. I completed my first manuscript revision!!! Cake for everyone!!!!!
- I was interviewed on MTV! (Dot com.) (By myself.) (It was silly. BUT STILL.)

And while all this was happening, so has this:

We're moving.

It feels weird to say (write) that in public. I also can't say it the other way -- the way where I say, out loud, that we're leaving New York -- without getting throat-punched by a host of extremely strong emotions, including the peculiar sense that ending my eight-year residency in the city somehow constitutes a terrible failure. Seriously, it just hurts. Even though I've gotten everything I could have possibly wanted -- the best and most incredible friends, a husband I adore, a career I wouldn't have dared hope for even in my wildest dreams -- from my time in New York.

Even though when I moved here, I never intended to stay even half as long as I did.

Even though I felt something scamper over my foot as I exited my apartment this morning, and looked down to see a rat that was roughly the size of a collie.

Despite all that, saying goodbye to Brooklyn -- even when our new place is, practically speaking, just as accessible to Manhattan proper as the one we live in now -- feels sort of like giving up.

But on the upside, we will have closets. Multiple closets. Which I have taken to repeating to myself as a sort of calming mantra whenever the impending move (not to mention the vast amount of shit we have accumulated over the course of four years in our little walkup) begins to feel too overwhelming. "Multiple closets. Multiple closets. FOR GOD'S SAKE, BREATHE! Think of the closets!"

When things get really dire, I think specifically of the linen closet -- the existence of which, moreso than the others, truly blows my mind. Can you imagine? A home, a comforting and intimate enclave, just for our sheets to live!

It is almost too much to bear.

Today, I walked around to the stores in our neighborhood in search of boxes, the first tiny step away from this place, and toward a new life on the coast of Connecticut. When the guy at our local bodega -- who has, for the past four years, been gamely and unsuccessfully trying to teach me to speak Spanish -- said that he'd miss us, I briefly considered crying.

Fortunately, I was interrupted.

"You're moving off the block?" asked one of the regulars, a heavyset guy with shaggy hair who I know by sight but not by name. "Where are you going?"

"Norwalk," I said.

"I've got cousins there!" he said. "Nice town, real nice town. I bet the rent is cheaper."

"Definitely," I said. "And our new place is huge. It's got closets!"

He nodded and grinned.
"Yeah, that's important. I understand," he said.

And then he winked at me.
And pointed to my stomach.
And then winked again.

You know what?

I give up.