And now for something completely different

I went over to my friend Paul's last night. He has a condo in downtown Minneapolis.

As I left his place at almost 1am (good heavens!), I walked out into the summer night. I walked across the deserted downtown street to my car. Looked down a corridor of office buildings. Saw a bit of greenery across the way in an urban park-thing some architect decided we needed more of in downtown. (We do.)

And I breathed in the metropolitan air.

I am a city girl down to my DNA. It's moments like those that make me twitch to move to New York or Boston or London.

I love the particular breeze you get from wind navigating tall buildings. I like the smell of hot summer pavement. I love dancing in the middle of a deserted street, with the ghosts of rush hour traffic all around you.

I also revelled in the all-aloneness of it all. Single Girl in the City. Artistic type wandering home after a hip evening. (My hair wasn't hip, but that's okay.) Of course, I was free to revel in it because I get to go home and snuggle up to my lover.

I think it is those moments that will sustain the gypsy in me once I'm married. The alone at 1am moments. While I have struggled with being alone as an adult, desperately wanting companionship (and sex) as 98% of singles do, I also learned to love the freedom. The surge of power as you realize that there's only you to take care of things, and you do it very well.

I am blessed in that my lover loves my independence. That he would be sad to see me home and in bed every night by 10pm.

I am also blessed that I have friends with chi-chi downtown condos who let me visit till 1am.

That's just upsetting

I have an odd fear of heights, we all know. But I'm oddly comfortable working in a tall building.

Except when it starts creaking.


Like some sort of sailing ship.


Tall buildings oughtn't to creak like they are waving in the wind.