Here and There

Six days. That's how long it's been since I wrote here on this blog. It's the longest that I have gone without posting here in over a year.

Two weeks. That's how long it's been since I posted a piece at Yeah Write, my beloved writing competition, and the best blogging community around. I've skipped a week here and there if I felt like I was too busy to read all the posts for the week, but rarely two in a row.

And it was strange. Strange not to come here first thing in the morning and post something. Strange not to spend my Tuesdays and Thursdays reading and commenting on the challenge grid posts.

And it was illuminating. Because a little time away made me realize how much I depend on this place. This place where I write words and think thoughts and have friends that are every bit as real to me as the ones I see in person every day.

It's not that I haven't been writing. I have. For two weeks I have had words weaving their way through my head, pushing themselves towards my fingertips, aching to be released onto the screen. And I gave those words their due. I wrote and I wrote and I emptied my head of the thoughts and feelings that had been crowding up my life for a few weeks. And when I finished I felt better, stronger, blessedly empty of the worries and anxiety that had been dogging me lately as I went about my days.

But for the first time in a long time, when the arrow hovered over "publish," I paused. I went back and read over my words again. Moved the arrow to "save," and pressed that instead. Closed out of the blog. I could have written something else, or posted some of the pictures I've been taking lately, but I didn't, because at the time, everything I could possibly write seemed pedestrian, juvenile and infinitely less important than what I had already wrote.

There is a lesson here, of that I am sure. There is something bigger I am supposed to glean, to understand, from this time in my life. And it's coming to me. I'm almost there. I know that when the dust settles and I look back on this time I will look back with clarity. I won't see things through the haze of uncertainty that clouds my days. I will know things that I can't know now. I will smile at how the enormity of it all threatened to swamp me at the time when in retrospect, it was just a moment in time.

But until that day comes, I'll keep writing it, and pressing save.

Because some things are not meant for publishing. Not just yet.

What I'm Reading: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I started this book as my train pulled out of the station this morning.

In what felt like two minutes later, the train pulled into Grand Central, and I had to tear myself away from a story that gripped me and tugged me in from the very first page.

I haven't stopped thinking about it all day long, and am counting the minutes until my train ride home so that I can pick up where I left off.

And as soon as I get home this afternoon I am sitting down on the couch, and not getting back up until I have read straight through to the end.

There is something utterly magical about being absorbed in a book.

I can't believe I waited so long to read this one.

But I'm glad that I have it now.

(Another) Snow Storm

Because I apparently can't get enough of posting snow pictures this winter...

I sat at my desk on Tuesday, waiting and waiting. The storm had started earlier than expected, and it was getting bad. Everyone at work was getting antsy, especially people who had to do more than just hop on a subway home. The hours dragged by, and still nothing. No e-mail from the head of the firm with that magical subject line: "New York office closing early."

And me? I wasn't worried about getting home, I assumed that I would make it somehow. I was mostly just excited about the possible early dismissal from work, the same way I used to be excited when school closed early for snow and an afternoon of snowball fights, snow angels, hot chocolate and cookies stretched before me like a long and endless road.

And then, at 2:15, it came.

And suddenly, I was ten years old again.

I packed up my stuff, put on my boots, and hit the streets. Everywhere I walked people were slipping and sliding and complaining about it. Bemoaning the seemingly interminable stretch of snow that we have been getting lately. But not me. I made my way to Grand Central on foot as the snow swirled. With nowhere to go in a hurry I took my time, enjoying the rare site of the city covered in white, snapping pictures all the way.

I guess I should probably be sick of it by now, but I'm just not. I'm a winter girl, and this is the best time of the year.

January 21, 2014.

Usually I can see New Jersey from my office window.
Not today.

Snow-covered 6th Avenue

Impassable 50th Street
(although it was fun watching a cab try)

Slippery 5th Avenue, South

Slippery 5th Avenue, North

Deserted Rockefeller Plaza

Driving Home. Can't See Lanes.

More than a foot

My favorite snowstorm view

This Is Romance

My alarm went off half an hour early this morning. I figured I would need a little time to help dig my car out of the snow and attempt to de-ice it so I could make it to work; a job that I don't mind under normal circumstances but that was distasteful at 6:30 on a freezing cold morning.

In the still-darkened room I reached for my phone to check my work e-mail, but there was no alert telling me that my Manhattan office was closed due to snow and subzero temperatures. I clicked on the MTA website to check on the trains, but it seemed that everything was running relatively normally, with only the regular delays that one would expect when mother nature gifts Westchester County with more than a foot of snow on a weeknight.

I put the phone back on my nightstand and it was about that time that I noticed I was alone in bed.

I went into the hallway where I stood in the darkness for a few seconds listening for the quiet rumble of the TV or the clicking of fingers on a keyboard - sounds that become commonplace, and even comforting, when you are married to a night owl. But the house was silent.

Figuring that David had probably spent most of the night toiling away in his garage workshop, I headed to the window to check on the weather and see how much snow I would have to contend with.

When I pulled up the shade, it took my brain a minute to register exactly what my eyes were seeing. A quiet street. Every house, car, sidewalk and driveway covered in an undisturbed blanket of snow.

Except for my own.

My own driveway was buzzing with activity. Both cars were cleaned off, and running. The entire thing had been cleared, top to bottom. And there, in the center of it all, stood my man, snow-shovel in hand.

I pulled a sweatshirt and sweatpants over my pajamas, threw on some boots and went outside. The frigid air stole my breath as I made my way down the completely clean and positively ice-free driveway. When I reached him and looked at his face - cheeks rosy and eyelashes frosty from hours outside in the cold - it hit me.

This is romance.

To me, romance isn't candle-lit dinners and surprise date nights. It's not moonlit walks on the beach or vacations to exotic destinations. Instead it's this. It's shoveling the driveway so I didn't have to. Warming up the car so the heat would be on when I was ready to leave.

It's stealing the last minutes of darkness before the sun rises, standing together in the cold as the stars disappear and night slides towards day. And it's bundling my freezing cold man into a blanket on the couch and making him coffee before I run upstairs to get dressed for work.

When I look back fifty years from now I may not remember every bouquet of flowers or every present we ever gave to each other. But I know, without a doubt, that for the rest of my life I will remember today, and these moments, when a regular winter morning suddenly became something extraordinary.

Early Morning Magic

It always seems like a good idea until the minute my alarm goes off. Or, until the minute I wake up five minutes before my alarm goes off. 

I have to get up right away, before my brain starts working. If my brain engages, even for a second, it's remarkably easy to talk myself out of morning exercise and close my eyes for another hour of sleep, and then the opportunity is lost. 

When I do get up, I'm always happy I did, but those first few minutes are always, always painful.

This morning wasn't an exception.

The alarm rang at 5:30. It was half an hour before I normally get up to exercise, but with my new-found discovery of spin classes, I wanted to catch a 6am class before work. So 5:30 it was.

I turned off my alarm as quickly as I could so David wouldn't hear it, and crept out of my room, eyes practically closed and hands full of the clothes I had laid out the night before. 

By the time I was awake enough for my brain to protest I was already in the car, backing out of the driveway in the darkness.

The first few minutes of the class were slow and sluggish, but as the music kicked up, so did I. I shook off the exhaustion, and for 45 minutes, I flew. 

I left the class feeling energized, as early morning exercise tends to do.

And when I pulled back into my driveway to rush inside and get ready for work, the sun was just starting to rise. So instead of rushing I got a cup of coffee, went back outside, and took these pictures.

Those first few minutes are always torture, but the rest of it? Not bad. Not bad at all.

Cycling With Soul

I went because I wanted to spice up my exercise routine. But mostly I went because the first time was free.

The room was pitch black but for a single candle on the floor, and even the excess light from the flame reflecting off the wall of mirrors at the front was soon obscured as the mirrors fogged up from the heat.

"Let me see your SOUL," boomed the instructor as he blasted the music so that the throbbing base seemed to shake the entire room.

"Let's RIDE," he said with a maniacal grin. "Everybody UP."

I followed the movement of the perky, ponytailed girl next to me who stood up on her bike in a fluid motion while maintaining a breakneck pedal speed. She made it seem as easy as a stroll through the park, while I held on for dear life and wondered when we would be able to sit down.

The answer seemed to be, never.

Within seconds sweat was dripping into my eyes and my legs were on fire. I am a runner and consider myself to be in reasonably good shape, but it was clear to me almost instantly that running shape and SoulCycle shape are wildly different.

"Speed it UP," yelled the instructor. "Turn up the INTENSITY," he screamed as the music sped up.

Muscles I barely knew I had were shaking and threatening to collapse, and a quick glance to my left told me that Perky Ponytailed Girl, damn her, was actually smiling as she reached down and gave her resistance a full twist to the right.

My vision blurred, my quick breaths caught in my chest, and I was dying of thirst, mostly because I was afraid that if I reached down for my water bottle I would take a header straight off the bike.

And through the fog of exhaustion and pain came my fierce vow to never do this again, along with a certain smugness born from the knowledge that I had managed to resist whatever addictive properties most of the world has found in the SoulCycle machine.

And then, the music slowed. The room grew darker as the candle was extinguished. In a voice barely above a whisper, the instructor told us to sit and close our eyes while we pedaled.

"Lose yourself," he said. "This is your moment. You can do anything."

I wanted to smirk at his platitudes, but I couldn't. The music arrowed through me and as I pedaled the pain and exhaustion of the class fell away. I found a rhythm and all of a sudden I felt like I could pedal forever and for one strange moment I wished that the class would never end. That I could stay in this hot and steamy room and ride this bike for the rest of my life.

Then it was over.

And as I joined the sweaty masses headed towards the door I was already thinking about when I could come back for more.

That I would have to pay for.