welcome to my mind ...

New York City. The Big Apple. Holy fuck there's so many people there. I mean, there's a lot of people in Seattle, but damn NYC.

I drove up to NY the day before my birthday. I'd made arrangements with my uncle, my dad's brother, to have dinner with him and the family. Two of the three cousins I knew as a child were there, along with the two new additions to his family from his more recent marriage, as well as my grandmother, and her sister and brother-in-law. So it was a fairly full house.

I was afraid it was going to be just as awkward in person as it had been over the phone, and ... though I wasn't exactly right, I wasn't really wrong either. It wasn't the same as it is with the other family members I've not seen in ages. Somehow, despite how close I was to my father, I never got terribly close to his family. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I never grew terribly close to my mom after dad died, but I get along so much better with mom's family than dad's. It's easy with them. I feel like family. My uncle was accommodating, and his wife is very nice. It was nice seeing them again, hearing about their lives. But I felt like a guest, not the long lost cousin returning for a visit. After dinner, I was anxious to get to the hotel so that I could have time to decompress.

That evening, I actually questioned why I'd driven up there. I knew I had to, and I do feel better, now, about having gone up to see them. I have a feeling, however, that the next time I find myself in that area, I may not mention it. They'll get fussy with me for not making plans ahead of time, but I also think they would understand. And if they don't? I dunno, guess it's good I'm not really all that close. It wouldn't affect me much either way. I think the biggest part of wanting to make sure I saw them all was mostly to do with my grandmother. She's 92 and, although it seems like she is going to live forever, I get that her expiration date is a lot closer than it was 10 years ago. If she passed between now and the time I get to NY again, I would be happy with this recent visit having been the final one.

Back at the hotel, I kind of unpacked the few things I'd brought, had myself a shower, and made myself as comfortable as I could in the strange place. I went to bed hoping that the next day would be better, since I'd be out on my own.

The morning of the 5th, I woke up around 5, but I'm going to chalk that up to being in a strange place. I looked through the few texts I already had, and swiped through IG and FB, but ultimately I wasn't ready to start my day yet. I dozed off and woke up again around 8. This time I decided to just get up and figure out what my plan was for the day. I had ideas, but nothing specific. I needed to figure out how I was going to get in to the city, which parking areas by the train stations were free, and if I decided to go with a paid one, how much extra it would cost me. {At this point in my trip, I was fairly broke, and two days away from getting paid, so I had to be careful with my finances}

I finally figured out a station that had parking and left with a little bit of extra time to compensate for getting lost, which I did. I got to the station in just enough time to catch the train ... except that someone was blocking the one spot I needed to get my car in to, and so I ultimately missed the train. Rather than get lost, again, looking for another station with free parking, I decided to just stay there and wait the 2 hours for the next train. I thought it was an hour, until the train pulled in and the conductor said it was going to be another hour before they were to head out again. Whatever.

Due to this, I ended up draining a lot more of my phone battery than I planned, but that's okay. Despite not taking nearly as many pictures as I wanted to, I still got plenty, and it was one of those few times that I was forced to enjoy my surroundings without the distraction of the phone.

Once in the city, I got to experience a handful of the touristy things. I started out at Penn Station, made my way up to the surface and decided to do the Empire State Building first, since that was a closer walk than to the theatre. I paid the extra to go up to the top floor, floor 102. It was ... anticlimactic. And a rather cramped space for so many people. I mean, when you're that high up already, going from the 86th floor to the 102nd floor only made a minimally noticeable difference. However, simply being up to the very top of the Empire State Building was still awesome. I've had a 3D jigsaw puzzle of it for years now, so I can actually point out where I was in the real thing.

After that, I needed to make my way to the Lion King theatre so that I could purchase tickets for that evening. When I got there, they still had tickets for that night {I'm not surprised; it was a 7:00pm Wednesday show} and they were advertised as starting at $129. I was willing to pay up to $200 for a seat. I lucked in to getting a fairly decent seat for only $99! I had a tall person in front of me, so I had to move around a bit, and sit up straight for most of it, but the show was AMAZING. Stunning. It gave me goosebumps. The actors are all fantastic in their rolls! But I am getting ahead of myself.

After stopping at the theatre, I still had an hour to kill before the doors opened, so I walked to Central Park. I'd been able to see it from the top floor of the Empire State Building and I'm glad I made the walk to the park. It was kind of cool how, once you were in the park, the city noise was almost completely shut out. You could hear the sounds in the distance, but it felt a lot farther away than just a block away. I didn't get to walk the entire park {another thing added to the list of things I will have to do next time} because I had to head back to the theatre, but I did walk around a little bit, for maybe 10-15 minutes.

On my way back to the theatre, I'd realized that I hadn't had a single thing to eat the entire day, so I found a little bakery right up the street, and bought myself a brownie. I didn't have cake for my birthday, which is oddly something I make as a requirement for myself, but I still had something snacky. It was a birthday brownie.

Once back at the theatre, as I said, I got a fairly decent seat. It was the last row in the left orchestra section, under the mezzanine, right up against the sound booth. I had almost a clear view of the stage, and would have had a great view if it hadn't been for the tall person sitting in front of me, who couldn't seem to understand the concept of sitting still. So I had to keep moving so that I could see beyond him. It's definitely a show that I will be seeing again. Perhaps I'll have the chance at better seats whenever it happens to come on tour. Or whenever I go back to NY. Perhaps I'll even do both.

After the show, my phone was dead, so I had to figure out how to navigate my way back to Penn Station without the assistance of Google Maps. Here I am, alone in NYC, at 10pm, navigating the streets without a phone. Yay for adrenaline! I actually managed to get to Penn Station fairly easily. I'd remembered at least one of the streets so I just followed the signs back to where that street was. I went in to the wrong entrance first, and was rudely redirected to the proper side. Apparently the Long Island Railroad only has one entrance. Whatever. I got back to my car, which was all that mattered.

That evening back at the hotel was very different than the night before. I was much happier with my decision to drive to NY. However, I was ready to get back to VA. I finally crashed around 2:30 or 3am. My birthday came and went without really talking to anyone. It was nice not having to explain to anyone why I was in NY. I'm sure most people there don't care though; they deal with tourists on a consistent basis and couldn't give two fucks why anyone not from there is there.

After charging my phone, and posting about my adventures, I received a message from a cousin who happens to live on Long Island, and we made plans to meet up for lunch the next day, before I drove back. So the next morning, I got up, packed up the few things I had brought with me, along with the few extra things I'd obtained {my grandmother gave me some old photos} and proceeded to check out, then make my way back in to Huntington to meet at TGI Friday's for lunch. This was the first time, essentially, that I was meeting my cousin, along with his wife. Lunch ran later than I anticipated, but that's okay. My only goal was to be back at my aunt's before midnight.

They took me to Michael's afterwards so that I could pick out flowers for my dad's grave site {he was allergic to real ones, and fake ones are much cheaper anyway} and I got these nifty looking black and red ones, with some shimmery crap sprinkled on them. I could have gone without the sparkles, but they looked cool so I went with those. Once we parted ways, I drove out to the cemetery.

It was the first time since we'd buried him that I was back. I ended up spending much more time there than I anticipated as well. Once I was there, I just couldn't bring myself to leave. So I just sat there. I didn't talk, I took a few pictures, and I played on my phone. Mostly I needed to figure out how to get back to the highway from where I was. And I discovered there was a way to get off the Island without having to pay any tolls. By the time I left the cemetery, however, it was rush hour so I spent a solid hour just sitting in traffic, getting lost, and sitting in more traffic. Let's just say I got the full NY experience.

I forgot to mention the tolls ... holy crap. It was $40 in tolls just driving from DC to Long Island! It was about half that going in the opposite direction. I think they care less about you leaving than they do about you coming in. I also took the Brooklyn Bridge to avoid the toll leaving the Island. Which also put me to take the Holland Tunnel. Apparently because of the amount of traffic, it creates a lot of stress on people. Perhaps it's because I wasn't on a time constraint, and I was on vacation, but I didn't stress once about the traffic. Or even getting lost. I just went with it and made sure to take my time heading back to the correct route. Which is funny to me because I'm usually super high strung and have a serious case of road rage, normally.

The drive back was a good way to help me clear my head, but the gravity of visiting the cemetery, and maybe of turning 30, hit me pretty hard that night. I made it back to my Aunt's place around 11, I think, and I was good for a couple hours, but then I just couldn't hold back the emotion anymore. Luckily, thankfully, I had two people who were there to just be there for me. I'm ridiculously grateful for both of them {my cousin and his best friend} because normally I just deal with it on my own. It was a nice change to have people there who weren't going to judge me, or feel weird or uncomfortable around the sudden wave of emotion.

It was a full three days, and I definitely had a new life experience that I'm glad I got the chance to have.

Okay, this is a lot longer than I figured it would be. Surprisingly, I wrote all of that in about 40 minutes. But alas, it's time to end this one. It's very possible that the VA Beach entry will be the same length.

Until then...