Literally, Genevieve Clare

The Concrete is Always Greener

I sometimes get lovely emails from readers conveying something along the lines of “I’m so jealous, your life seems so exciting.  It makes me want to move from [small town] to NYC.”  First of all, I’m not sure what is conveying so much excitement - probably the conversations my boyfriend and I have about hairbands falling in the toilet.

But I totally get that the John Mayer middle-of-the-night personal concert isn’t the type of thing that can happen in Madison, Wisconsin.  Actually, knowing John (which I do, INTIMATELY, WE ARE BEST FRIENDS), it could.

What’s funny though, is that I spend at least half an hour a day peering into people’s lives that couldn’t be further from my own with that same sort of envy.  I read the baby blogs of girls I barely knew in college, who are posing in beach pictures with a baby in their arms and another one on the way.  They are wearing soft jersey knit dresses and squinting into the sun, one foot on its tip-toe to balance the weight of a Osh-Koshed munchkin on their hip.

Do I want that life?  Did I choose that life?  A big, loud, resounding NOT YET.  But I certainly look on with a sense of unfulfilled nostalgia.  The backdrops of their Facebook pictures are adorable starter homes and back porches.  Mine are hipster bars and coffee shops.  Their cars have stale french fries stuck between the leather seats, but the A train’s crevices are residence to a growing number of bed bugs.  Crickets sing them to sleep each night while the dull hum of the bar across the street is my lullaby. 

New York City is even better than everyone says it is.  And I would even go so far as to say that I no longer have a love/hate relationship with this city – in fact, I think it has become just LOVE LOVE LOVE. 

But consider this.  I got to ride in a car (a real, live temperature-controlled, personal-space-providing, above-ground, homeless-person-free car) for about two and a half hours this weekend and I swear to God, I almost burst into tears when I had to get out.  

To anyone who thinks this big city life I’m living is so great – I promise you, someone thinks yours is great too.  So that must mean they both are.

The next time you’re driving to Target with the windows down, and you have to turn up the volume because the wind is muffling John Mayer’s voice on the radio, just know that I am very, very jealous.

Fourth & Fifth Grade Poems

My mom emailed me these pictures yesterday and said, “Your dad and I found these while cleaning out my desk and have been DYING laughing all afternoon.”

My brother’s poem:

The emotional depth here is astounding.  Please note the subtlety of “Buster (my dog).” 

And then there’s mine:

Light and breezy.  Apparently every poem in the collection is accompanied by a drawing except mine, because I chose to let it speak for itself.  This is who I’ve been my whole life.  THIS. 

I bet there are other poems in a box in our basement that read something like this:

NIGHTIME IN HOUSTON

Lights keep flashing

past my window.

My mom says airplanes,

but I know better.

UFOs filled with aliens,

on their way to kill us all.

SAFETY NEVER TAKES A VACATION

Tip-toe down the hall,

looking through the crack in her door.

Double checking

that my sister hasn’t been Jon Benet-ed.

She’s safe for tonight.

In Which I Share This Week’s Lessons

MONDAY

• Activity: Quit my job.  I LOVE my job but accepted a new one that I think I’m going to love even more.
• Key Learnings: Telling wonderful people you’re leaving is like breaking up with a hot, funny, kind boyfriend 25 times in a row.  Also, do not use a joke comparing yourself to LeBron James while giving your notice.  Also, great things really do happen when you least expect it.

TUESDAY

• Activity: Took a “high-speed” train to Boston for a business presentation with my boss.
• Key Learnings: There is no such thing as a “high-speed” train, and Boston is on the water.* Also, do not ask your boss if Boston is on the water.

*DO NOT JUDGE ME. Somehow U.S. history slipped through the cracks of my education because we moved around so much. But I did have six years of Texas history, so ask me anything about the Alamo. ANYTHING.

WEDNESDAY 

• Activity: Stayed out until 2 am with my coworkers.
• Key Learning: Pretty Little Liars is still scary after seven cocktails and it is even scarier at 3 am.

THURSDAY

• Activity: Participated in a company teambuilding Amazing Race around the city.
• Key Learnings: It is possible to eat an ice cream cone while running through the streets of Midtown. It’s also possible not to feel any guilt when you disappear into the crowd of Times Square, abandon your team and cab it home to watch Bethenney Getting Married. 

FRIDAY

• Activity: Went to work.
• Key Learning: Secretly using your cube and other parts of the office as storage for your winter clothes, linens and shoes will one day come back to bite you in the ass.