Here or There?

School's out for the summer. Woohoo! I am going home to Chicago in a couple days and I absolutely cannot wait. When I tell people I am going home, they know I mean back to Chicago (or the suburbs, that is), to my parents house. But the reality is, although Chicago is and will always be home to me, I have set up quite a nice life for myself here in New York and this is my home for now. I've been here for eight great years now and I def know I am in it to win it here in the big city for at least for another three (I want to teach 10 years in the NYC school system and get my lifetime health benefits) and then I will take it from there and see if its time to move back home to Chicago or continue my life here. From the girl who expected to come out here for a year and head back home, its been quite the journey. I still can't believe I have been here for so long. I am super grateful to have such a great job, a solid group of friends, and I just re-signed my lease for another two years. Things have been going well. And I am happy. 

Here's the thing, although I LOVE going home, I don't really have any friends there anymore. When I go home, I hang out with my family 99% of the time. Things are different than when I would come home after my first year or two out here and I'd send out an email to my girlfriends and we'd all try to get together for dinner/drinks. That's doesn't happen anymore. We grew apart. There's no bad blood, the distance just caused the friendships to basically be non-existent now.  I don't reach out to them and they don't reach out to me. I am a firm believer that the phone (or email) works both ways so we are both at fault.

Also, my two closest friends from home moved away. My best friend from college (married and a mom now) lives in St. Louis and my high school best friend lives in Milwaukee (also married and with two kids) so they are not that convenient to see but we do make time if they are in town and I love seeing them. Although its still weird for me that they are someone's mother. Haha. And like I already said, almost all of my other college/high school friends that live in Chicago are all married with their own groups of friends and their own lives.

Take me out to the ball game...

I am a huge sports fan. Always have been and always will be. I love both playing and watching sports. I am super athletic and grew up playing all sorts of sports.  And doing it well if I must say so myself. Also, growing up, my brother wasn't really into sports so my dad and I would watch many games together. Bulls. Bears. Illini. YES! I was the son he never had in that sense. Until of course, my brother actually became interested in watching games with him also.

Since I love watching sports so much, I rarely turn down the opportunity of going to a game live. Whether it's football, basketball or baseball, going to a collegiate or professional sporting event is such a blast. I don't go that often, but when I do, I like to take it all in. The people. The food (and the beer). The athletes themselves. And the actual competition. There are just so many great things about going to a sporting event.

Let's Keep It Alive

Hola! That's hello in Spanish. You're very welcome for dropping that little piece of knowledge on you. I took 6 years of Spanish but can barely speak it conversationally. I do know many words and can put a sentence together if need be but should know a lot more than I do. I lost so much of it over time. Spanish is one of those language that everyone seems to use and will throw in Spanish or even Spanglish words in everyday convo here and there. But most people know when they are using these non-English words and use them on purpose. But there is another language that people also use quite often and don't even realize its not English. That language is Yiddish.

Does anyone speak Yiddish anymore? Anyone besides my grandparents, that is? They both still speak pretty fluent Yiddish and speak it around us when they don't want us to know what they are talking about. They will talk about us right in front of our faces and we will have no idea what they are saying. Even though that can be sometimes be annoying, the Yiddish language is becoming lost and it's a damn shame.

I Can't Get Over It

I know at 30 and being single still, people always ask why. I mean I am clearly a catch and the fact that I still remain single is just a big mystery. Huge. Well I am going to let you in on a little secret: I am overly picky. Some may say shallow. Some might say superficial. And I am not saying they are wrong. I can be picky. I can be shallow. There are just certain things that I notice that I cannot get over when I meet a guy. I mean maybe if the guy was super amazing, I'd be able to get over it, but that hasn't happened yet. I am hoping that if it is someone I like enough, I will see past it to the point where I don't even notice it anymore. As I am trying to be more open minded, there are some things I just can't get over. Sorry. When a guy has one of the traits below, it it just pops out at me over and over again and it can't be ignored.

I don't think this would work either.

1) A bad name. I know this is totally out of the guy's control and we should all blame his parents for this, but whatever it may be, a bad name is a turn off. Geraldo, Alfonso, Gene, etc... I feel like guys my age shouldn't have names like that. They are more for the older generation. If I am embarrassed to say your name outloud, how can I introduce you to people without laughing and/or cringing? This is going to be a huge problem.

I wish I could get over this, but I can't. I once went on a date with guy named Boris. I never addressed him by name. In the two dates and few conversations via text we had, I never once called him by his name. I avoided it like the plague and was embarrassed to say it out loud to my friends.

Grow the F*** Up

I consider myself to have a pretty short temper. Well, maybe not so much a short temper, but little patience for stupidity, immaturity, and the ridiculous.  Little things aggravate me, but don't set me in a rage. It's not like I need anger management or anything, but certain things set me off more than others. When these times occur (like the case of the laundry bitch), I am what my mom would describe as "wild." I start to shake, I have to clench my fists, and I really have a huge desire to hit someone or something. Of course I would never lay my hands on anyone, but in those cases, I wish I had a punching bag in my immediate vicinity and could let out a very loud scream to release some of the anger. I try to vent to my mom or my friends and then try to walk it off, and sometimes it cools me down. Sometimes it doesn't.

Like I said, this rarely happens, but it just happened the other day. I was at work minding my own business playing on my phone. I went on Facebook and saw that I had a message.  I opened it immediately and noticed it was from my ex-boyfriend. The same ex-boyfriend who asked me to never contact him again in order to move on with his life and his new girlfriend (who is now his fiánce). The last time we had any contact with each other he once again told me how happy and in love he is. He loves reminding me and himself this little tidbit of information. If you need to keep telling yourself this over and over again, then its a little strange. I get it, since I broke up with you, you want to rub it in a little more that you found someone before me. Totally fine and understandable. But still a little weird. Anyway, because any relationship we had, romantic and platonic, was officially over, it was odd that I received any sort of message from him. All that it said was "I appreciate the thoughts on Father's Day but please unlike. Thanks." I was totally confused by this statement and wrote back "What are you talking about?" I was puzzled. I had zero idea what he was talking about. After being outraged for a second for him writing me to unlike something I clearly didn't like in the first place, I re-read the message. At this point I noticed his picture icon was one of his father. Then it hit me. He must have taken an old profile pic of his father that he used years ago and reposted it for Father's Day. I probably liked it years ago and he thought I just recently did. Idiot.