DAY THIRTY-THREE: EXTENDED TOUR IN NEW YORK VI

We sleep late. Jed and Andrea leave to visit Jed's mom in Westchester County and do their laundry. I begin to see a pattern in the apartment listings on craigslist and realize I've set up arbitrary rules to navigate the cryptic postings. I don't pursue less than a 25 word description or the use of UPPER CASE. Regardless, I see two apartments. One is an enormous, huge, and fabulously large room in a Bed-Stuy brownstone whose residents are going for an anarchist-collective type thing, if that's even possible. It's expensive, though. The other apartment is easily overshadowed by two pairs of earrings I buy before I see it.

Ann, who lives in San Raphel, CA is visitng NY, and I meet her, her charming baby Luke Emmet, and her friend Pamela in the Lower East Side. Luke is sleeping, strapped onto Ann's back. Ann and Pamela give me advice about apartment-hunting, like check the water pressure and ask how often my car will be broken into. Luke wakes and cooing overtakes the conversation. Ann buys us Australian homemade ice cream (?) and I walk to the subway. I wonder about my own experience with the city, how heretofore it has been dictated by friends' locations and agends.

I decide that this is going to be the last day of the Iron Maiden Tour & Residency. I'm leaving Jed & Andrea's apartment tomorrow and they are the last official stop. I find myself anxious to create a life for myself here, which is a distraction from visiting and watching my friends engage in their lives. I want to jump in and bask. (I also find I'm incedibly spent. The next day I'm grouchy and the next day I sleep a lot and wake with a swollen throat.)