It always puzzled me, those people who checked the weather in states other than their own.  My father checks the weather in Austin and Montana (where his two girls live now).  I suppose it makes him feel closer, knowing what the weather is here, imagining me happy if it’s a crappy rainy day.  “I saw it has been raining,” he’ll say, “you must be in all your glory.”   And maybe it’s easier to imagine us knowing the temperature and climate conditions, bringing us closer to him, even if it’s his imagination.  Picturing Lea scraping snow off her windshield, muttering to herself. "It’s damn cold.  Son of a bitch."  Though if I were imagining her it’d be closer to "damn shit fuck crap it’s colder than a witch’s tit," which makes no sense at all.  Who the hell came up with that saying anyway?

I keep close with my New York family and friends, not through weather reports, but food reviews. Down the street from where I live, they’re selling stacks of firewood.  Road kill, firewood, and jerky can all be found on the side of the road, and I actually live here.  By choice.  People eat fast food here.  People get in their cars, not cabs, here.  We go to the mall and Costco.  It’s not what I’d imagined, exactly, but I wouldn’t trade it… well except maybe when I read about the latest New York restaurant opening. 

I still get updates on the newest restaurant openings, and my God, I even receive, and actually open, emails about sample sales.  I haven’t had the heart to unsubscribe.  I scroll through the emails and sigh.  “That’d be nice.”  Then I shrug.  Because it wasn’t all that long ago when I wanted this life, a life with space and a yard, steps, and storage.  A life as a mother who is busy creating her own restaurant in single servings with a pump.  It’s easier this way, as a mother, to visit another life.  I couldn’t pretend to be married with children once upon a time, but I can, from this angle see what it’s like to be living in New York with a meter running, hoping to find something that will outlast the season. And that I do and I don’t miss at all.