Last day in NYC

I'll wake Mike up in twenty minutes to walk down with me to pick up our moving truck. I can't believe we are actually leaving. It feels so weird. I'm looking around at our apartment...there is still so much to be done. Well, packing last minute kitchen stuff and just cleaning everything. Won't be too bad.

My last day yesterday at work was so sad. I spent the morning cleaning out my desk and trying to organize the upstairs office as best as I could. I goofed off with Miche and Claudia for the majority of the days. Those girls make me laugh so much. Lori and Meredith came to say goodbye to the old manager and hello to the new one, that evening. We also found a living/dying rat in the bathroom (eeeeek!!!) The four of us finished off my day at work by me reciting the names of my favorite NYC clientele in my notorious New York/Tara's Grandma voice. I was so sad to leave the girls though. I didn't cry until the end when I actually realized that I wasn't going to be able to spend my days with my best girlfriends here in the city. In the end, it didn't come down to the fashion....it was never about the fashion. It was about the relationships that I built with the people around me. I'll remember all of these experiences forever. All of the incredible people I met here in NYC will forever leave a lasting impression on me. I've had a really challening year managing these stores, but I wouldn't have been able to get through it on a day to day basis with out the beautiful girls at the boutiques and the incredible customers who I was able to share my days with.

Thank you so much guys.

(The beautiful roses that Lori brought me! ...and Rupert sniffing them. Dude, cat, do you have any idea you're about to travel across the country?)

Goodbye, New York City! Helllloooooooooooooo Baltimore and Texas!

Natural history museum!

We took a break from packing and went to the museum yesterday. It was weird seeing so many cool animals...that were dead. I kept getting really excited each time we would approach a new animal area, but my happiness would immediately turn to creeped out when I would realize that we were touring a museum of death and extinction. Wahh wahhhhhhh.

None the less....a great place for a photo op!

The first step is admitting you have a problem..

Here is the majority of the baggage we are going to be moving back to Texas. The sad part is that A. everything is mine from the second bedroom B. it is all filled with Betsey Johnson stuff (dresses, shoes, purses, etc.) C. the house is almost empty and Mike hasn't packed any of his things yet. I counted 39 dresses....and that's with me struggling to get rid of as many as I could.

What's wrong with me :(

My new pride and joy...

This baby has sadly gone out of production :( BUT....we were able to find one of the last ones down the street from us in Queens. Mike and I picked her up yesterday.

Oooooooooooooooooooh!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!! Drooooooooool.

Eight days left in NYC

...and I get cold feet about moving every 30-45 minutes during the day. Yesterday I sat in my typical lunch-eating spot in Central Park on my break. It was a beautiful day, people were smiling (good god!), tourists were excited to be in the city, I watched a rabid squirrel steal an elderly woman's roast beef sandwich...and there I was contemplating whether we were making the right choice about leaving. It's a scary thought, retreating back to a city that you left because you were feeling a bit unfulfilled at the time. But maybe "retreating" is the wrong word. I think "hauling ass" might be more acurately descriptive. I feel like I have worked really hard to keep up a high enough moral to live in this city on a daily basis. I've battled a lot of stress, whether it was stress that came from the store, how expensive everything is, the WINTER. I never experienced those kinds of emotions back in Texas. I was more concerned with dachsunds, sewing, school, that there was an IKEA twenty minutes away.... I never once felt panicked or unsure of myself. I spent a little while yesterday re-reading a lot of my older blog posts from when I first arrived here. There were many subtle signs of frustration and discouragement about living in this city. But gosh, the hardest part about being here is that literally you love it one week and you absolutely despise it the next. The drastic fluxuation of emotion that I have felt makes me feel bipolar sometimes. And it isn't just me...it happens to everyone I know who lives in one of these five boroughs. One minute you're happyvand feeling so lucky to live in such a bustling environment, the next you feel like you're batteling an angry depression monster that is trying to take your soul!!

Ahhhhhhg. I am really excited about going to Austin though. I think Mike and I will enjoy it (despite the 100 degree weather right now!!) and, if anything, it's a place for us to go to chill out for a bit, be around family and friends and enjoy life until we figure out what our next destination will be. I can't wait to figure out what will become of my career. I can't believe that I am going to be 25 in five months. This year has flown by. :(

On a side note, I'm leaving work early today and rushing back to Queens to meet Keith, the sewing machine enthusiast who works at the Singer store down the street. He is going to give me a lesson on my new industrial singer sewing machine that Mike and I are buying this afternoon (thanks mom!!!) :) :) We saw it while my mom was in town last week visiting. As we innocently sat at "Guacamole" eating the best burritos that the north east has ever seen, Mike spotted the Singer store next door and rushed inside to tell me that the sewing machine of my dreams was in the front window. I can't wait to start sewing again....and once I get back to Austin I'm going to take some more pattern making classes. I haven't touched my machine in over a year :( Superrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whew, it's already 9! I better get ready for ze'old work. With that, I will leave you with the latest picture that Mike took yesterday of our gorgeous feline. Rupert, you're such a stud muffin.

Wowwww....

Almost two months without a single post! I'm so sorry, little blog!

I can say without any hesitation that these last few months have been some of the most crazy and eventful ones I've experienced in a long long time. You would think that such times would allow for some incredibly entertaining blog posts, but unfortunately I just couldn't bring myself to sit down at the end of the day and recap prior events because I was just too freakin' EXHAUSTED!

The craziness all began back in May, when my devastatingly handsome boyfriend (hehe!) moved up here from Baltimore. The state of the economy was a hard blow to his moral as he went to interview after interview (along with twenty other candidates each time) for a few months. It was pretty shocking for both of us that he couldn't find a job, as qualified as he is. Meanwhile, I have been spending 40-55 hours a week slaving a way at my behemoth of a store trying to get the staff efficient, the stock organized, inventory under control, operational tasks completed, coaching, etc etc etc. On our way home from our busy days, we'd get crammed onto the trains, pushed and bumped on the streets, scowled at while trying to make small talk with strangers...and I'm pretty sure that my excessive use of hand sanitizer has equipped my immune system with the ability to fight against ANY germ for the rest of my eternal existence!! (is that good or bad?!) Both of us have been entirely too stressed out by so many factors for a little too long for comfort. I looked at Mike one day while we were eating poorly made Subway sandwiches in Strawberry Fields on my lunch break. We were both sitting in silence, dressed up in our nice clothes watching squirrels run around on a small patch of uncommon grass while tourists rode around on bikes and took pictures. Suddenly it came to me, "Why are we here?...I mean, if we're so unhappy...why don't we just move somewhere else?" A little light bulb flashed above his head and we both looked at eachother considering our options. Later that day, I started contemplating where to go. We concluded that a move back to Austin made sense. It is a place where we already have friends and family and an easy town to get back on our feet and save some money. Soooooooooooo.....we're moving back to Texas at the end of the month!

Of course, I have been really nervous about leaving my job. It has been something I've worked so hard for for three years. I have struggled with my decision internally for quite some time. Tara #1, how could you possibly give up a life time opportunity to manage a designer store in Manhattan to go back to Texas and potentially wait tables? Oh Tara #2, you're so silly...don't you realize how much happier you'd be if you weren't crying and stressed out all of the time about sales figures and corporate visits?" I think that I had the same kind of feelings while I was in college. I remember thinking, "No job will ever make me feel as stressed out as I do right now!" Well, Betsey made me get pretty close, but I remember as soon as I graduated, I didn't care WHAT I was doing for a job, as long as I didn't feel that way anymore. Funny enough, I have the same feeling right now. Waiting tables would make my day if it meant that I didn't have to worry about a million of the thngs that I do on a daily basis here. It's funny how the situations can change but the lessons you learn are still the same...

I've also had cold feet about leaving NYC. It's an amazing, bustling city, that's for sure. But for me, I feel like the amount of time I put into working in order to make enough money to live here just isn't worth it in the long run. I feel like I sacrifice SO much of my "Tara" time to feel comfortable living here. For some, it's an easy exchange. They can work a million hours a day and still have it in them to go out at night and live happily. For me, though, I just need more substance to my life. I want a cute little house so badly, a nice yard to BBQ in and have fun with friends and family, I want to be able to hop in a car and listen to my OWN music and arrive to places on my OWN time, I want a dog that doesn't have to be small enough to cram into a change purse so I can take it on the subway..... there are a ton of things that make me happy in life that just aren't accessible here and I'll do anything I can to have those things back and share my time with the people I love so much.

So....that's where we're at!! Less that two weeks until we hop into our uhaul and head back to the good'ol (swelteringly hot! eeek!) midwest.

I hope that I didn't lose many of my readers once took a slight hiatus from writing on this thing. A bunch of my friends who i had no idea read this thing have been like "What is the DEAL!!!" BUT GUYS....seriously! I'm back and I know that I'll have more desire to write again once my life feels a little more substantial.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Tara