There comes a point where you just want to exhale, with the belly roll and boobs.  You just want to be yourself, to have fries with that and finish them.  That sometimes is now for me.  I just want out.  Of New York.  The thing is, I love New York, and New Yorkers.  I really do, but I want to escape my own for a while, to just be, living in tennis lessons and t-shirts, a simple life in bed with my dog and my man.  Living simply with grilled fish, olive martinis, and a horizon.  That’s what I want in my life right now.  Covers.  Bedding.  White and clean, manicured.  I want a neat private life right now, something filled with bedtime stories and lazy mornings filled with myPod and an open road.  Something to do with a sheet for a blanket, awaking in a stretch, not a startle.  I want to yawn more, to nap, to wear more cotton.

Here’s the problem.  I’m moving to Texas in days.  I can count them on my fingers.  Nine days if you count today.  I’m still in bed, so I guess I should count today.  It feels like spring through the windows, but yesterday it was snowing.  I don’t know what I’m waking up to.  The problem is, I’ve made Texas into my "when" day.  You know the "I’ll be more fit and thin when…"  I’ll be happy when… It’s the Soon Syndrome.  Someday.  Why isn’t "someday" today?  If you were to stop me on the street and ask what I was up to, I’d say, "I’m on my way to dinner or to drinks or to Fourbucks."  I’m on my way somewhere.  Why wouldn’t I respond, "I’m walking"?  We always value what’s in the future instead of being fully in the moment. 

When I’m in hot-o-balls Texas, I’ll exercise every day.  I’ll sweat and the heat with kill my appetite.   We’ll play tennis, and I’ll swim laps with goggles.  I’ll take kick-boxing classes.  But why aren’t I at least going to the gym here?

I feel full, even when I wake up lately.  Because I’ve been eating too much food at night.  Drinking too much.  Halving my way through diets.  Half in, when it’s easier.  Ribs are fine as long as I don’t eat the cornbread or starches.  No they’re not!  You don’t get thin on laquered ribs coated in sugary thick sauces.  Or chunks of lamb in yogurt sauce over cubes of handmade bread.  You get thin on cottage cheese.  Drinking your water.  Not seeing how much you can get away with eating but seeing how little you can eat.  Shrink your stomach.  Drop a banana in a blender with skim milk and ice.  Then it’s a diet.  Everything else is excuses.

But it seems like it will be easier in Texas.  Because in Manhattan, seeing your friends means meeting for drinks, which turns into fries.  In Austin, maybe I’ll meet friends for tennis, or live music and seltzer water.  Or maybe I’ll settle into domestic life and draw and write at night.  Maybe I’ll be so busy that I’ll be able to sleep through the night again.  Lately, I haven’t been able to sleep.  I awake in the middle of the night, ripping off my clothes, covering myself only with a sheet.  Then I turn from one side to the next, on my stomach, hoping for the involuntary take-over, when I am no longer in my head.  When my body jerks asleep.  I miss being that tired.  Maybe Texas will tire me.  This city keeps me.  Awake.  With a cotton sheet and little else.  I miss sleeping through the night, awaking in a stretch.  Blender drinks.