missing new york

H and i have been missing new york lately. our cramped apartment, endless walking day and night (as woody allen says in annie hall, "The country makes me nervous. There's ... You got crickets and it-it's quiet ... there's no place to walk after dinner"), and excellent sushi and thai food.

honestly it took me a while to miss new york because i was so eager to get out of there. by the time we moved, i was completely exhausted with my daily routine and ready for the beach. i'm still glad we moved, but there are some haunting moments that come up and remind me how much fun it was to walk in central park, no matter what time of year, to walk from the east side to the west side of the city, to stumble across a great restaurant then eat there until we were sick of it, and to see random subway and street performances every day.

or to pile our bookshelves to the hilt... i miss those bookshelves. they were super cheap and fake wood, and you can see the shelves bending under the weight, but it was really my favorite nook in our apartment. when i took these pictures i was toying with the b&w and sienna features in my camera. who knew i would look back on them with so much fondness and nostalgia?

this was the sum total of my painting space in nyc - those little white crates held most of my paint and brushes (and collection of "mysteries" - i have a fondness for found objects - another thing i miss about nyc). i will always remember the look of panic on H's face when i reached to pick something up off the street. then he'd start a strange mixture of grumbling and ranting about dog pee and who-knows-what-else being on whatever took my interest. fortunately for my health i listened most of the time :)

here are our shadows and H's foot on a gorgeous day when we walked from our favorite hamburger place (the shake shack!) all the way past the empire state building, through central park, up 5th avenue, and back to our apartment on the upper east side. you might not realize it, but that's about 5 miles of walking! and certainly not the first time we did it :) lots of fun that walk.

if you are ever in new york, you MUST go to this place in madison square park - the hamburgers are incredibly good, and they have this insanely thick and rich frozen custard. D-lishus! my little heartstrings are being pulled! oh the pain! i must figure out a way for us to have a long working vacation in ny. and boston. my grand scheme in life with H is to live for several months at a time in lots of different cities. that way i can rest easy knowing it's temporary, and he can have lots of city time. plus we would get to enjoy lots of different cities in a non-committal type way. awesome says i! now if we could both find creative careers that would allow for that sort of city-hopping we'd be set. any ideas?