Don’t get me wrong:  I still love New York.

But sometimes, I get a little homesick for suburbia.  In weird ways that you’d never imagine!

For instance, I kind of miss being bored.  Having nothing to do, doing things for the fun of it.  Remember driving around town in search of things to do, combing the racks at the Salvation Army, playing one hand after the other of card games at Denny’s.  Hanging out at someone’s house for hours, watching TV, chatting, playing music.  There’s just no room for that kind of bliss in the fast-paced NYC life!

Also, I oddly miss shopping in big-box stores.  YES!  The sky-high shelves, flourescent lighting, bland tile floors and OH the prices!  I’ve been sneaking away to Target at the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn almost once a week all by myself to peruse the aisles and sometimes nip away with some great bargains on things that are just so hard to find around my fancy city-stores:  sweatpants, for instance.  I happily forked over $20 for sweatpants once upon a time only to find they’re available for half that much at Target!  I miss this so much.

I also miss trees.  Rolling hills of endless trees.  Autumn has been so rushed here.  Thanks to you tourists (curse you, tourists!) we can barely see the leaves changing through all these premature CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS everywhere!  I ask you, where is the sincerity?

So I had a kind of Proustian moment earlier tonight.  I had a cup of Twinings Apple Spice Chai and for some reason, it reminded me of home in the autumn.  Fresh, spicy, homey, comforting.  If you want to encapsulate everything I’m missing about home into a flavor, it might be that very tea.  I had two cups.  In my I