our gay apparel

This morning, I was driving home from dropping A off at school, and I heard on the radio that a schoolteacher in Michigan tried to change the words to "Deck the Halls."  She had her confused elementary-aged kids singing "Don we now our bright apparel."  Oh, Michigan.  You do a sister proud.  What was she afraid of?  Did she think her second graders were going to rush out and put on gold Speedos and hiking boots, because "Teacher said we should don gay apparel"?

(Gay Apparel.  As an aside, I had a roommate after college who would sometimes mow the lawn

in his gold speedo.  Our next door neighbors, Butch and Dan, asked if I could take over

the lawnmowing duties full time, because my hiking boots weren't as "distracting"

as his gold speedo when they were sitting on their front porch smoking cigarettes mid-afternoon. 

Personally, I think I looked dead sexy in those boots and my blue shorts.)

Yes, Michigan!

(Aren't these mittens adorable?  You can get them here, in case anyone wanted to get me some.)

Over the long weekend, I was in Michigan attending a close friend's wedding.  I grew up outside of Detroit (which is very different than growing up inside Detroit) and I went to Michigan State for college.  After college, I lived in Lansing for a couple of years, until I moved to California for law school, when I was about 24.  I also spent part of my bar-studying summer in Michigan living at my parents' house (so cool, I know).  So I have lots of friends there, still, and my brother and my sister-in-law, as well as their tiny twins, live in the metro-Detroit area. 

The trip to Michigan was too short.  They always are.  New York has not, ever, been "home" for me.  But this is what always happens, when anyone from someplace else finds out I live here, or someone I meet here finds out I am from Michigan:

Other person:  Oh my god, don't you just love living in New York?

Me (if I'm being honest):  Not really.

Other person:  WHAT?! (shock, incredulity) What do you mean?  WHY NOT?

Me (this is where it gets tricky):  Um, it's really loud.  And the work ethic is sort of crazy.  And... I don't know.  There's a lot of smog?

For some reason, it's impossible for me to articulate what it actually is I don't like about New York.  I can find plenty to complain about.  And there are actually some things to like.  But what it really is, is that for this Midwestern girl, it just doesn't feel like home.  I routinely get lost.  People shout at me when I'm indecisive about ordering my sandwich.  People make fun of my accent A LOT (which I did not even realize I had). 

But more than my love-hate relationship with New York as a city, there's also law firm life, which is completely foreign to most of the old-Erin friends. It's hard to understand it, really, unless you live it. Not that my friends don't accommodate my crazy work schedule, they totally do. But they don't really understand how it grates on you to do it day after day, with not even a close friend's wedding weekend as sacred non-work time. And complaining and explaining gets boring.  For others, yes, but I have also started to bore my own self with complaining about work. It's not only the work schedule, either. It's things like the Diamond Olympics, vacations on tropical islands instead of Niagara Falls, judgement over the '99 Jetta we drive to work, and not knowing how to pronounce pretty much anything on the menus at half the restaurants I find myself in (I'm always asking, "Is that some kind of cheese? Why don't they just say it's cheese?").  And for crying out loud, I do not want to spend $100 on dinner and only get three raviolis.  I want enough to take home for lunch. (I still do not understand why that is not done.  Why is being wasteful more polite?)

This is the surprising part, though.  Michigan doesn't feel like home anymore either.