I really do love living in NYC. There's so much to love about it. However, lately I have not been too fond of certain things. First off, living in an apartment gets aggravating after a while. Tonight I opened my bathroom window to see my neighbor showering and then cleaning out his nose - in the form of very audible snot rockets. Yucko. Then since we all live in such close proximity on this block, I always hear at least one of 5 dogs barking. Cars with loud music drive by several times a night and around once every other month, someone is having a really loud party til 2am. I share a backyard with the 2 (illegally 3) family house next door. The tenants change every couple of years so I never really get to know who exactly is living there. I am a little afraid of letting the kids play outside alone. Currently there is an Asian family on the 2nd floor, a Hispanic family on the 1st floor, and an Indian man in the basement. A very nice Pakistani guy owns the house and lives across the street and so far he has chosen pleasant folks to live there (thank goodness).

Another thing that is weird is that there is so so much to do, that I can never decide and then just don't do anything. LOL. There's a bunch of auditions coming up the kids would like, a bunch of youth choral groups, about 200 places in my immediate area that offer karate, soccer, basketball, gymnastics, music lessons (the list doesn't end) and things like African drumming, quilting, belly dancing, scrapbooking, and theater arts classes. K wants to DO something and I can't choose which are the best places. There are just SO many cultural events going on at the same time and I always want to go to several. There are 48 freakin' street fairs in September. There are 12 events I'd like to go to that are all on September 24th (a backyard composting class, a "National Estuaries Day Festival", the Queens County Fair, "Films for Grandchildren", Bookmaking/bookbinding class for family photo albums, Hans Christian Andersen storytelling in Central Park, Re-creating old-time radio dramas at a nearby museum, "Saturday Family Art Workshop", a "Cross-Sectons of Ancient Egypt" cultural study, "Harmony on the Hudson" music festival, a Russian culture immersion, and an "Autumn Circle" family art project). I know it's probably dumb to complain about this, but sometimes it can get overwhelming and confusing.

But all that aside, I still love it here. I am grateful, though, that my mom lives an hour away in the quiet suburbs (more like "the country") where we can escape to for a few days and swim in a real pool, go to the beach, see a trillion stars, be surrounded by flowers and trees, and hear nothing at night but cicadas, crickets, and katydids - and the occasional dog barking.