It's so hard to say goodbye

I've just been dealt a devastating blow. The time has come for me to depart with one of my closest companions: The Jeep.



My mom just called with the news that someone is interested in buying it. I knew this time would come, but honestly, I didn't think it would happen so soon. No lie, I gasped when she told me.

After the Big Move, it didn't make much sense for me to keep the Jeep in New York. The city annoyingly has alternate side of the street parking weekly, if not daily (I don't know, I never checked), and given my travel schedule, I'd have to hire someone to move it or else match my monthly rent in parking fees. So off to my parents' house it went, along with the other things I've recklessly and not always willingly abandoned over the years.

In order to fully understand the magnitude of this, we need to walk down memory lane. This was my first big purchase--the first thing ever that I bought and paid for all on my own.

Every month for six years, I faithfully wrote checks for $168.51 to Onyx Acceptance Corp. to make that car mine. (Those checks are burned into my brain, because the amount was so big to me at the time. Oh, foolish youth.) It wasn't a fancy car--air conditioning was its only amenity--but it suited me fine.

Together we took mundane trips to the mall, work and the like, although strangely the Jeep didn't seem to enjoy our longer hauls as much as I did. There was the time I got a flat tire in the middle of Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania and mine and Ilyse's boyfriends at the time had to change the tire in the darkness of a Sears parking lot because the employee refused to change the tire unless I bought four news ones.

Then there was the time, about an hour from my destination of visiting Melissa in Providence, Rhode Island, that my car started smoking and eventually stopped working on I-95. Poor Dad had to drive three hours to come get me and tow the truck home. However, on our final and most recent three-hour jaunt for a weekend in Atlantic City, the Jeep gave me no problems. Its almost as if it knew. (That's us on our last trip, above.)

So the Jeep has been at my parents' since March, nosed between the shielded Mustang and my father's 22-foot truck. From what I hear, it hasn't seen all that much action in the last few months, so it's probably best the Jeep moves on to someone new. I'm glad that after 16 years (nine of them in my hands) its in relatively good enough condition that someone else wants to give it new life.

I know its completely ridiculous to sentimentalize something like this, but I can't help it. It's like having to give up a cherished pet because you're suddenly kicked out of your house with no where to go. (Oh, wait.) Also, ridding myself of my car officially cements my status as a New Yorker (that, and the dumpster diving I took part in a few weekends ago) and that's an unnerving feeling.

Now, my mother said I could take time to think about it, but I told her to do what she thinks is best. Some things are just better left unsaid.

Nostalgia central

Witness above my commute to work. It ain't pretty, I know, but riding home today I started to feel a little sad. Maybe it was the JBJ rockin' on my iPod or maybe it was the drunken Knicks fans, but with seven days left until I move what little I own across the Hudson and East rivers and officially into a one-double-oh zip code, I got to thinking about what I would and wouldn't miss about living in New Jersey. Behold, my list, in no particular order ...

Au revior! to:

1. My 5:30 a.m. wake-up call and subsequent hour and 15-minute commute to work.
2. That pathetic look I get when I say I'm from New Jersey from every Alabama/Connecticut/Idaho native who's lived in New York a total of six months.
3. Living my life by the whim of NJ Transit.
4. Having to share a bathroom. (Nothing to do with living in New York, but it's still a perk.)
5. Spending every waking minute commuting to New York, Hoboken, New Brunswick, Stanhope et al because no one ever wanted to hang out in Bloomfield except for the one time I made them on my birthday.
6. Being associated with AquaNet, acid wash jeans and fringe bangs.
7. A lack of vegetarian options in the frozen food isle of the supermarket.

I may sniffle at:

1. No longer having emergency bathroom access on trains.
2. Feeling like I'm abandoning the homeland.
3. Spending every morning with the NJ Transit staff. Such nice folks, always, every day.
4. My roommate. (Aw.)
5. Parallel parking. It may just be my one talent in life.
6. Leaving behing my waxer and hairstylist, Tonya at Bangz in Montclair and Sam at Vanity in Upper Montclair. Oddly, I'm constantly getting compliments on my eyebrows and everyone just lurves the new chin-length hair cut.
7. New Jersey pizza. I have yet to find a slice in New York that can rival one of my many faves from the Garden State, i.e. New York Pizza in Rutherford, Vinnie's in Bloomfield, Lockwood in Stanhope, Ray's in NB and surprisingly, the pizza joint in the Hoboken train station. (I'm talking true $2 slices here, not ones that are of course delectable because you just paid $10.75 for it.)

That's all there is, folks. Tune in in two weeks when I'm having panic attacks because the toilet won't flush.