Delayed appreciation

I never really fully appreciated Kansas weather.

I did today when it was snowing on my way to work and I read this: "Heavy snow warning for most of central Minnesota and west central Wisconsin Monday and Monday night...some areas could get 6-9" of snow."

It's pushing 60 in Manhattan, Kansas right now and I am going through a HEAVY SNOW WARNING. Baseball starts today. I did my spring cleaning this weekend.

I just want to pack up my sweaters, damnit.

Growing pains

When I was in sixth grade, I would wake up in the middle of the night crying because my calves ached so badly. My mom would run to my bedside, and massage my legs til I fell asleep again. I couldn't run as fast as I used to at summer camp because my muscles would twitch and throb. When I finally went to a doctor, we figured out it was simply growing pains. According to kidshealth.org:

"Although growing pains often point to no serious illness, they can be upsetting to a child - or a parent... Support and reassurance that growing pains will pass as children grow up can help them relax."

Though I no longer get throbbing pains in my legs, I still experience growing pains that are both upsetting to me and my parents, just as the pains were 14 years ago. Though I am definitely my parents' child, I'm also a product of society, my political and religious beliefs, my friends and most significantly, my own life experiences.

Sometimes I make decisions that aren't in line with the life my parents would have chosen me to lead. It's not because I don't love them or respect who they have shaped me into being. It just means I have experienced life in a different way. One that includes text messaging, inevitable financial debt, a world where traditional dinner-and-a-movie dating no longer exists, the expectations of being a strong, independent woman while still being gentle, caring and motherly.

It doesn't change who I am at the core. Rather, it shows my intensity, ability to love with great depth, confidence in my future and logical approach to life.

And what I ask from then is simply the freedom to be myself, to make the decisions - good or bad - that we all desire to make for ourselves and the understanding that it's nothing personal, but truly the act of being me.

The Big Apple

I'm not sure why I love New York City so much.

It's certainly not the thick, polluted air, the smell of garbage on the streets wafting from mounds of black garbage bags tossed at the edge of the sidewalk or the ever-present fear of terrorism, crime and corruption.

It has more to do with the click of a hurried woman's heels against the pavement as she walks down Fifth Avenue with an armful of colored bags with rope handles. It's the surge of business men carrying leather briefcases and talking on their Blackberrys who cross a full minute before the crosswalk flashes permission to cross. It's gazing into a restaurant window to see a group of gay men enjoying appletinis and laughing uproariously. It's the dog parks as the only oasis in the concrete playground and the peace that envelopes you when you reach the southern edge of Central Park.

It awakens in me a hurried, energetic spirit that often lies dormant in the depression of a Minnesota winter.

I'm on the plane, 45 minutes from landing at LaGuardia. I'm tired, stressed and a little lonely. But all I can think about is the rush I will feel in the back of a yellow cab heading to Midtown. Looking up to be surrounded by people and buildings and feeling that jolt of exhilaration as the hotel bell hop, complete with a top hat, greets me: "Welcome to New York, miss."