They've Gone About As Far As They Can Go

Greetings from Kansas City, where I am happy to report that everything is still up to date, including my hotel room, which had a lovely selection of pillows of assorted shapes and sizes.

I spent my first night away from Milo last night, which I had actually been looking forward to until people started saying to me, "Oh, is this your FIRST night away from the baby?", at which point I started wondering if I was going to suffer some hormonal freak out in the middle of the night that would cause me to open my windows and scream "I miss my baby!" at the top of my lungs.

Then, when I actually got to the hotel and found myself continuing to enjoy being away from the baby, I started to worry that maybe something was wrong with me that I wasn't freaking out. All of this reconciled itself very nicely at 4a.m. when I dreamt that I heard a baby crying, causing me to wake up in a panic. After about an hour I fell back to sleep, and ended up sleeping a grand total of eleven hours. Yum. Yeah, I miss Milo, but honestly, I really miss sleeping too, so I think it all evens out.

I like leaving New York every now and then because it always reminds me that living in NYC is pretty much like living on a different planet. In the rest of the country people are softer, almost as if you were looking at them through a soft focus lens, and they are all married and have kids. In New York being married is only vaguely socially acceptable, and having kids seems to be viewed as a quaint, archaic practice, unless you are either single or being artificially inseminated, in which case it's cool and progressive. Even the doorman at the hotel, who looked all of about 19, said he was married. He also said he really wanted to visit New York sometime so he could see "Wicked".

"But you must see shows on Broadway all the time," he said enviously. I wondered briefly if he was gay, but then I thought maybe they don't have gay people in Kansas City.

"Not as often as you might think," I said. "You know, when you live there you just sort of take things like that for granted." I didn't add that you couldn't pay me to go see Wicked or The Lion King or any other stupid musical.

"That's true," he said. "I guess it's like when you live in Vegas you never go to the casinos."

I didn't really think it was that similar, but I just smiled and nodded then we talked about the weather, which something that people in the middle of the country like to talk about, sort of the way that New Yorkers like to talk about real estate and rent stabilized apartments. I felt a little like a fish out of water as we talked about weather - I'm never sure if I'm supposed to be for or against it - but it reminded me why I love living in New York, and it made me feel all warm and happy about the place I live and the little family I have to go home to.