A Tale of Two Cities

I hate this title. It makes it look like I've seen the second Garfield movie. (Did anyone see the first one, by the way?) But it was a book before it was a bad pun, so it stays. Contrary to what I've strived to maintain on this stylishly minimalistic golb, I am posting pictures. I've been sitting on this post for a while. The only reason I haven't done it until now is because I couldn't easily transfer it from a Word document like I do with most of my posts. And posting pictures is kind of a bitch. But here we are. Where I've been. And where I am. Disclaimer: I'm hesitant to show pictures of my house because it's really nice. My parents don't like having anyone but close friends over because they "don't want people to think we have money." On the contrary, I think these pictures will show you why we don't. Also, I am not a photographer. Back to the point: New York City. The Big Apple. I heart NY. It has a steak named after it. It's very crowded and noisey. Sometimes it smells like urine. Sometimes like vomit. This is where I worked. A picture I did not take, because people who take pictures in Times Square are the people that every day ebbed away at my faith in humanity. Pedestrian traffic is still traffic, people. Learn how to not be retarted. My Old Kentucky Home. The Bluegrass State. It has a lubricant named after it. We have eight acres of space. It smells like plants. This is the view from my front door. I don't have the nicest camera in the world, and I think the best time to take pictures with it is in rainey weather. My apartment. It had been painted several times. The fake tile floors are cracked and expose rotting wood. It's small. It sounds like Chi-Chi's. It smells like dust. This is the nicest the room ever got. My room. It has cushy carpet and a paint scheme that I picked out. It also has furniture and a full-sized bed. I also have a small air purifier that doubles as white noise for when I gently drift off to sleep. Some people use their bookshelves for all their books. Since I got rid of my encyclopedia, I use it for crap I made / won in college. I don't like the picture of Audrey Hepburn mainly because I hated Breakfast at Tiffany's and it's kinda gay. But it's black and white, so it stays. My pictures don't hang because my parents count on me getting out of the house and they don't want nail holes in the walls. If you look closely Hook is playing. NY Bathroom. The bathtub is in the middle of the wall, necessitating an odd shower curtain. The water is never constant. Showers are spent adjusting, freezing, and scalding. When sitting on the toilet, your legs touch both the tub and the wall. It smells like a Taco Bell bathroom cleaned with a toxic combination of bleach and amonia. The top of that window was always open and I had no idea how to shut it. When I was in Brazil, we had to throw toilet paper in a trashcan instead of flushing it. As was the custom for my Hispanic roommates... You can't see it, but behind the shower curtain is one of the heaters. It's basically a hot pipe. I burned my hindquarters while washing my feet once. I got to pick everything in this bathroom, from the layout to the cabinets to the tile, paint, pictures, lighting fixtures, etc. I went with a Tuscan theme because I loved the time I spent in Italy years ago. And thanks to my mother's purchase of linen spray, it smells like sandalwood. It's attached to my room, and I share it with no one. It has a huge shower, no bathtub. I tend to fall asleep in the morning if I have the option to lie down. When I want a bath, my parents have a jacuzzi tub. My mother always wants me to empty the bathroom trashcans when people come over. I don't see the point. They could guess that we use trashcans, and not the way they do in Brazil or in my apartment. Why the charade? So there you have it: a trashcan in use. Without shame. NY kitchen. Most kitchens in NYC don't have full sized appliances. This should give you a hint as to why. But I'd rather have full sized appliances than space in the kitchen. Especially this one. It smells like frozen fried food, and sometimes there are bugs. I wiped everything down when I moved in and bought a microwave, George Forman and coffee maker. There were dead bugs and roach motels everywhere. It was interesting teaching myself how to use a gas stove by myself. But I'm proud to say that it was much easier for me than for Hans and Rachel. It wasn't always this messy. I did the dishes periodically. And the case of roommate's Corona was usually on the floor. Underneath that trashbag in the lower left-hand corner is a washing machine. On top of it is a red blanket and what I assume used to be a shower mat. Por que? That was the decoration. Kitchen. It has an island and a washing machine, several cabinets, a three-section sink, two pantries and what the designers called a "baking station." I recently bought a wok, so it often smells like szechwan stir-fry. Otherwise it smells like Yankee candles. You can see the floors that run through most of the house: Brazillian Cherry. This is an early picture of the kitchen. This is before I installed rope lighting above the cabinets with Mom's pottery and strings of grapes. It's purple. I had nothing to do with that. You can get a glimpse of the dining room, my favorite room in the house. Since I don't have a corresponding New York picture, you don't get to see it. In the common space in my house we have a couch, two recliners, HDTV and TiVo. In my apartment we have my roommate's wet clothes. My house is a ranch, but my apartment is on a fifth floor walk-up. My house also has air conditioning. But coming home has been a very indifferent time for me. Some stuff's happened, I'll talk about it later. But the idea of coming home longer than for the summer isn't realistic to me. Not only have I found nothing to do, but I've realized that my friends and I grew apart much more than geographically. So this is my dilemma. Do I trade all the awesome things New York has to offer for comfortable affordable living? Or do I go gung-ho and return to the city that never sleeps and do what I really want to with my career? To answer that question, I'll tell you that I've already applied for jobs up there again. I can't find anything here that doesn't suck. I haven't told my parents yet, and I'm even going to a job fair on Monday. But my vacation's over. I moved home to either settle with a life less exciting or to prove to myself that I belonged in NYC. Methinks I belong there. Methinks I'll go back soon. I'm going to miss my room.