ANYWAY. I’m down with all of the above — for now, anyway — though I’m sure if a shrink took one look inside my head, she’d be like, “You haven’t been on ANY medication whatsoever for HOW long? Your entire LIFE? Say WHAT?”

I guess I’ve always just assumed that since I’m relatively happy there can’t be anything seriously Wrong With Me™, and I still adhere to that belief, but I’ve gotta say: this past year has really thrown me for a loop on the crayzee front. I think I’m just now finally starting to come back down from it.

Which is good, because there’s kind of a lot of interesting — shall we say — “stuff” in store. For both me and — if they ask nicely — my loved ones.

But in the meantime: back to the title of this post! Yeah, that — the very thing this here entry was supposed to be about. Namely: you know what really sucks? Going from having a 3-mile roundtrip walk to work built into your day to having only a 2-mile one. You’d be surprised at how much not having that single extra mile will RUIN your LIFE. Especially if it’s twelve billion degrees out and you RELY on those few miles to serve as SOME exercise so that you won’t feel lazy lounging around all the rest of your days on your new ridiculously comfy huge bed with several fans pointing at you while you tear through a gripping Young Adult trilogy on your Sony Reader.

Which brings me to my next White Person’s Issue, and I’m surprised nobody’s called me out on this yet: since I moved into my new place, how have I not learned how to play Fleetwood Mac’s Gypsy on my guitar yet? I mean, I have been waiting all of my life for exactly that opportunity, and here I am — in a room, with some lace and paper flowers — under exactly those circumstances. What am I waiting for? When will I have the chance again?

Answer: never, because I’m moving back to my olde place. You know, the one on 34th Street? Yes, Elliott still lives there.

With any luck, eventually my body might be restored to its former 3-mile roundtrip daily walk glory. And with even more luck, maybe my head will remain on straight for the duration this time around.

So, the other Thing™ is:

It didn’t occur to me until embarrassingly recently that my life had started! Being a college flunkie, I never got the piece of paper all y’all got handed ceremonially that says, “Okay, you have officially graduated from childhood and are now being released hither into the world to start Your Life™.”

Oh, but it doesn’t say it, Bess. It reads it. You’d know that if you’d stayed on at school and been declared suitable for adulthood instead of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and fumbling your own way through trial and error, wondering at every turn, “Is this it?” or “No, now… how about this?” and then “What if I do this in life?” or “No, THIS will be my plan.” Only to realize now — finally, at age 33.5 — that you’ve actually been living some semblance of a Real Life™! Honestly! All this time, it was happening in the background while you were searching frantically for some unknown “else.”

I’m going to stop myself before I continue to spew more cliches. But as a wise, wise woman named Marie Martin once said — and I’m paraphrasing here: “All the cliches are true. How do you think they became cliches?”

A few years ago — I can’t remember if I wrote about it here, but I don’t think I did — I discovered Chelsea Market for the first time. Yeah, that’s right: several years into my life in NYC, and I’d never set foot in the most magical building in the city. At the time, my friends and I practiced our Capoeira moves in the hallway space there, and everybody thought we were auditioning for the tango competitions down the corridor, but that’s beside the point. I remember coming away from the place in all its raw-warehousey knobby-wood-floored glory, being reminded of childhood, and being strapped into my carseat in our pea-green Volvo station wagon as my mother routinely pulled into the back parking lots of random industrial buildings to take us to thrift shops, second-hand instrument shops, and creep toy factories.

Those memories are purely magical for me, and I think I can attribute a lot of the better parts of who I’ve become to them, if that makes sense. If that’s a sentence.

For lack of about twelve thousand better, remotely coherent ways of putting this, Chelsea Market is my Latter-Day That™.

And it is on the West Side. I am of the West Side. It is where my Life™ is. That is what I “do.”

I’ve decided.

I weep into my guitar over things that I can’t [accurately/sufficiently/appropriately] say in writing. Ergo, the auditory silence.

I’m sure there’s a logic statement for this. Help me out, Furstie, if you’re there. (Are you there, Furstie? It’s me, Margaret.)

See, what it is is that there’s a lot more transparency in my real, direct, immediate life than there used to be.

And I’m kind of enjoying it.

A lot.

Carry on.

Plus, it would get me to quit drinking once I knew I’d be risking destroying someone besides myself — oh, but, P.S. not before I’ve tried a rose petal margarita, kthx, so any/all concerned parties may want to get on that at some point before I start ovulating next Tuesday! — and it’s the be-all/end-all excuse to say no — not just to a glass/bottle/shot/flask/growler of something, but to anything at all, ever: “Sorry, but I can’t lift that box! I’m pregnant — doctor’s orders.” “No, I can’t go downstairs to fetch that guest from the lobby, I just don’t feel up to it, what with the baby & all.” “Do what tonight? Pay lots of money to get dressed up and attend a black tie event? Nah, I think I’m just gonna go home and chow down on some pickles & icecream… now that I’m expecting & all.” “Nope, sorry, no can do, I’m preg–”

–and on and on. Man, it’s even ridiculously satisfying typing out hypothetical scenarios in which saying no is 100% shamelessly justified.

Hmm, let’s see, what else… oh yeah, I found a really good future potential babysitter this weekend, so I’d be all set on that front: a gal who will be just about old enough to start thinking about earning some spending money here and there when my kid — should I have one in the next year-ish — is, like, four or five. I think she’ll make for a very responsible babysitter and an excellent role model, and I’ll have no problem leaving my child under her care while I’m putting back rose petal margarita after rose petal margarita out on the porch with my feet up, listenin’ to the cicadae.

If I have a girl, I’ll have to name her Clementine, because this is my new favorite song.

And also because, hi? Why wouldn’t I name my daughter Clementine, thanks?

She’ll change her name to Kyla or Zoe or Madison when she’s 18, but nobody’ll ever be able to say I never tried.

Whatever your preconceived notions are, hear me out for a second, because it’s true that the Emerilware belonged to us both equally, and I didn’t realize it at the time — this is a really prime example of my total inability to glance even .5 seconds into the future — but I think Elliott looked around him, and was like, “Holy shit. Nothing in the apartment AT ALL is mine, except the couch and the Emerilware, and the Emerilware is only half mine!”

I mean, women nest, and I had lots of alone time to do so in our years living together, spending many a weekend going out to find things to bring back to the apartment. It wasn’t anything I was conscious of while it was happening. It didn’t dawn on me at all until I was almost done packing and decided to leave the Jankowski Sister Arizonan Heirloom Silverware (a set purchased by me at a Target in Phoenix, moved with me to San Francisco, taken by my sister when I was about to throw it down the trash chute, and then mailed back to me for use in my Washington Heights apartment) behind, since it became evident that otherwise Elliott would temporarily be left with the one spoon, one fork, and one knife that he rode in with.

So it may have caught me off-guard at the time when I mentioned we needed to figure out what to do about the cats — you know, those living, breathing animals we’re responsible for? — and he immediately replied, “Well whatabouttheEmerilware?! Huh? The Emerilware, it’s both of ours, who gets it?!” Obviously he was keeping his couch, since even if I wanted it, it can’t be taken out of one apartment and moved into a second without being taken apart and put back together by a professional upholsterer, but the Emerilware? Fine, I said. He could have the Emerilware. I do more cooking, sort of, but I would temporarily be virtually kitchen-less anyway, so who cares?

So then I went over to his place (that still feels weird to say) the following weekend (seriously, it felt like years later, but it was just the next weekend — I’m such a wuss!) to visit the cats, and I remembered something, another thing Elliott had mentioned during The Breakup Chronicles of the Month of June 2010™: he mused hypothetically that since he wasn’t going to have any money for the foreseeable future, wouldn’t it be cool if he made a big batch of chicken salad with dill on Sunday nights, for himself and Cobweb to dine on throughout the week? (Sarge doesn’t like chicken.)

I’ve never been a huge fan of chicken salad myself, but I am a huge fan of both dill and untimely/unprecedented cute things said by boys, and suddenly the combination sounded amazing to me. My brain stashed that info away for a rainy day, and now fast-forward to the week after I moved: having been without a real kitchen for days (DAYS, I tell you!), I thought I’d take the opportunity to spread out, breathe a little, try to get the cats to reacquaint themselves with me, and cook up some chicken to dice up into a salad with some fresh dill and onion.

Which is when I discovered Elliott’s New Knife™. You see, readers, when faced with the problem of not having anything to scoop, fluff, pierce, or cut with, without passing Go or collecting his first set of silverware in two decades, Elliott went straight for a giant, top o’ the line steel chef’s knife. Along with a great big cutting board, a new colander, and some other stuff, but seriously? Emphasis on the knife and its effortless chopping of dill. I think I may have actually thought the phrase “It’s like buttah!” in my head, which I loathe hearing from other people and have never uttered before in my life. I so covet this knife, and I’m thinking of moving back into the apartment so that I can be nearer to it at all times.

The chicken salad came out deliciously, and although it was supposed to be left in the fridge as a huge batch for Elliott to share with Cobweb all week (Sarge subsists on moths), it was so good that I ended up eating half of it myself. I compensated by making another batch for the two of them yesterday (this is normal behavior, right?), of which I only took a tiny little Tupperware portion for myself.

Bess’s Recession Dill Chicken Salad for Elliott & Cobweb to Munch on Throughout the Week

4 chicken breasts
1 onion, diced (I used a red one, solely for color)
3 tablespoons (I think I actually used WAY more than this) or so of dill (fresh, but I guess you could use dried if necessary)
salt, garlic, & pepper to taste
1 cup mayo (or more/less to taste)

1. Baste the [already defrosted, rinsed, patted dry] chicken breasts with about a tablespoon (total, not per piece) of a combination of salt, pepper, and garlic powder (or freshly minced garlic).

2. Put a pan over medium heat, wait a minute, and then add a tablespoon or so of olive oil.

3. Cook on each side for approximately 6 or 7 minutes.

4. Set aside to cool for awhile, then chop (dice, I guess?) and toss with the onion.

5. In the meantime, you will have combined the mayo and dill in a separate bowl.

6. Toss everything together and serve with bread or crackers!

You can add celery, but really, why ruin a perfectly good meal?

I cooked the chicken in a heavy-bottomed piece of — wait for it — EMERILWARE! Oh, and Emeril & I now live on the same street, so maybe if I ask him nicely he’ll give me my own set of ware.