August hiatus

August passed by both incredibly slowly and much too fast. Slowly, as I was waiting for N to move up here permanently and once and for all. And too fast because August always slips by without enough long days at the beach.

Much has changed. I moved out of the apartment with the turquoise floors on Waterville Street, and N and I moved into "thee" apartment on the Eastern Promenade, which is as lovely as it sounds. We are completely in love with the new place, though I'm sure we'll love it even more when we finally unpack everything. (Photos to come.) The story of our moving is not a pretty one. It was a long, arduous process that still feels unfinished. I didn't realize that moving two people out of their apartments in the same week (especially a week in August, in New York City) would be so complicated, tiring, and stressful. The day we moved N out, it was 95 degrees and humid. Actually, the entire weekend was nothing but tiring and stressful.

I drove a rented cargo van to New York on a Friday, saw a dying woman splayed out on the side of the highway in Massachusetts, having just been ejected from her speeding car, got lost in White Plains (somehow) on the way, and got pulled over by bridge cops on the Triborough for having commercial plates. The drive was harrowing--especially since I was driving a huge rental van, don't forget--but the interaction I had with the cop on the bridge reminded me of an aspect of New York I've always appreciated and now miss, and that is the succinctness with which New Yorkers communicate. After driving for hours and finding I didn't have enough money for the bridge toll, I plaintively wailed to the cop who was about to write me a ticket, "Just tell me how to get to freakin' Brooklyn!" In about 9 words he matter-of-factly gave me the best, most easy to follow directions I've ever gotten from anyone, as if answering a crazed woman was something he did every day (and in fact it I guess it probably is). I miss that about New York--the ease with which people talk to each other, get what they want, and get it over with. There's a lack of pomp and circumstance there that you don't find as often in New England. To the New Englander's ear, that kind of mainlining conversation might come across as curt, but anyone who lives in New York knows that this style of communicating is the opposite of rude: it's a kind of shorthand that signals that you understand the rules of engagement in the city, and that you won't waste someone else's time if they don't waste yours.

Here in Maine, people just kind of move a lot slower, though I think it's like that pretty much anywhere outside of New York. I would bet that ordering a coffee in the morning in Maine takes an average of 4 times longer than in New York, though I do remember feeling really impatient almost every time I left the city to go anywhere else. I'll never forget the utter disbelief I felt when I stayed at a hotel in North Carolina for a wedding, and discovered that they'd stop serving brunch by 10am on a Sunday. There was no food to be had for miles, so I couldn't even walk down the street for coffee or a bagel. One of the things I love about Portland is that I would never be similarly stuck (as long as you're on the peninsula, you're most likely no more than 5 minutes from a cup of coffee.) And of course, if I completed all my transactions as quickly in Portland as I did in New York, people would think I was rude, stressed out. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how I felt a lot of the time in the city.