What day is it?
I spent a good chunk of the absolutely GORGEOUS Sunday we just had in a goddamned car and a subterranean arena to attend my sister's sort-of graduation from occupational therapy school. I doubt I would have been so irritated by this if a) she'd actually been getting her degree (her school won't finish for months yet--all the people attending had asterisks next to their names in the bulletin to this effect), b) she's wanted to be there, and c) it wasn't Mother's Day. I'm not a mom, but I hated that they forced the day to be about the kids in school instead of the moms who made sure they got there. To be fair, some of the graduates are moms themselves, but still. Mother's Day! It's their day! And, yes, I pouted because it was a beautiful day out and I was stuck in a car with the windows up. I'd have happily had wind-blown hair and been a mess for pictures (I was anyway!) for the windows to be down. My parents are officially "old" in that they now and forever prefer air conditioning.
More than that, I think the nicer weather is turning me into a basket case. It's not like we even had a particularly brutal winter, but the promise of seventy-degree days and sunshine makes staying indoors for graduations (or re-arranging one's room, as I did Saturday because I'd shipped so many boxes to my parents' house from my apartment, I couldn't get around there) nearly impossible. I think I need to get my bike back from the shop where it's being tuned up and having its brakes replaced. I need to hop on it and go for an hour's ride. I need to be outdoors. That's a strange need for me. I'm a homebody and a lazy ass, and yet I go home to my parents and am like a terrier on PCP about how we! need! to! go! for! a! walk! My friend Mrs. Beans is dog-sitting for her brother and she keeps inviting me on dog walks and I rush over there because dog walking! Outside!
Last weekend, I was upstate with fairest who shopped for an entire day, but as long as I could loaf outside in the sun, I was happy. As long as I was outside. I was able to restrain myself with practicality enough to go out of the sun before I burned, but that was as far as I got. Outside! Wanted outside! I bought a cheap bike so I can go biking up there without hauling my nice bike back and forth. If I hadn't had a less-experienced rider with me, I might have biked all the way into town (and been royally fucked when I had to bike back the same distance, most of which would have been uphill).
Some of this is undoubtedly related to my anxiety/euphoria over leaving my job, too, I realize that. I'll soon be really free to do whatever the fuck I want, and I'm straining at the bit to get there. I have a bucket list for leaving New York. I keep adding to it, but 9 out of 10 additions are part of the Outside! All the time! mania. To whit:
1) Go to the Highline Park.
2) Ride bike over the Brooklyn Bridge (presumably to Brooklyn where there may be still more paths to take).
2A) If not a total chicken-shit, bike over the GWB, with its much scarier low rails and traffic.
3) Take the Staten Island Ferry.
4) Go to the Cloisters.
5) Walk the length and/or circumference of Manhattan (I did most of this one day with fairest and cagexxx, and we covered a good chunk from 116th to Canal Street).
6) Go to the Brooklyn flea (ew, so much Brooklyn stuff).
These are the additions that I made recently. The list includes going to the Guggenheim (never been) and a massive three-day-at-last binge where I tour the entire Metropolitan Museum of Art. I keep going to the Met for exhibits and then fucking around visiting this or that of my favorite places (arms and armor; the Egyptian Wing; the rooms of furniture). I want to spend like three-to-four hours a day, making sure to take my time and not to get too burnt out with museum fatigue, over a few days, to really take it all in. New York and DC are the places to go for museums, and I need to absorb some of that before I peace out of here for a substantial portion of the next four years (at least).
Anything else I should consider? Let me know!