Delta rocks. The plane was on time unlike Spirit which makes a lifestyle of being at least an hour late usually much more. I heard a Delta flight being canceled over the loudspeaker. Spirit lets you go through to security thinking you’re checked into a flight you learn is canceled.

The plane was tiny and we had to walk outside to board it. I haven’t seen anything like that since I took nine Areoflot flights in the former Soviet Union. The difference being Delta was clean and smelled good. They even gave food and free drinks.

When I arrived at the apartment I pay all the bills for but no longer feel at home in, I thought “my god you’re gorgeous. I would buy you.” Then iI remembered I had thrown out the keyboard and mouse as they looked old. Circuit City doesn’t sell things for Macs so I had to walk to 59th and Fifth. Not for the first time I realized that it’s a quicker walk, almost, than my walk to Krogers. The things I do to make this apartment look model pretty.

The Upper West Side only has six avenues: Riverside, West End, Broadway, Amsterdam, Columbus and Central Park West. It’s about a ten to twenty minute walk depending on lights and how many people are on the streets. The walk across Central Park is about ten minutes. And then I get to go all sentimental for my adult/youth as I lived in the exact Fifth Avenue hood I walked on for sixteen years.

I love the Apple store so it was fun but then I walked home and had to do Fairway. The sticker shock was amazing. If I had any doubts that I’m doing the right thing I lost it then.

Lucia, my best friend who cracks up at her own jokes and so i do, lives in a type building most people identify with the Upper West Side. We stood on the stoop with Little Luce who is graduating high school on Wednesday and George, Little Luce’s father. He’s a news cameraman and lives in Florida now. Neighbors kept coming out.

First there was Eleanor who is probably the Upper West Side’s most famous Jewish/Republican. She’s 82 and works full time for the city. You just have to love her and vote for her when she runs for an office she knows a Republican will lose and doesn’t want a “poor young good person” to lose. This past year she ran for Assemblywoman. One year she just might win. She’s the tenant who has lived the longest in the building–since around when I was born which kind of makes me feel a bit young.

More and more neighbors came out. My sister called and i put her on speakerphone so she could hear what we all imagine and want a neighborhood to be like. If I lived in Lucia’s building I probably would have stayed forever also. It’s rent stabilized. Law & Order, the franchise, often films in the building.

i think Little Luce has experienced something increasingly rare and wonderful–her entire life in one Manhattan apartment. The building is across from Barnes & Noble which she calls her “second” home. I wanted to go in as I miss my two Barnes & Noble but left too late.

We saw the vid George did that won him an Edward R Murrow award and others that were breathtaking and achingly sad. They turned him into a Christian but he doesn’t try to convert his daughter. Couldn’t really.

I gave her the name Little Luce and thus Lucia, Lucia as Little Luce was into all things Lucy. She’s sentimental so she doesn’t want me to change her name to Anna Mae. (Way too obvious but I’m not feeling particularly clever.) At 5′10″ she’s a bit tall and at seventeen a bit old for “Little” however. Her ambition is to move to Japan and learn Zen from a true master in a small town. She was president of the Asian Society in her school and is in love with all things Japanese.

I’m in town for her graduation. Since I came in for that I made appointments with dentists and doctors. Tomorrow , Monday is a real hard day for me. I have to face my inner demons and hope to. Life is too short and precious. But I didn’t see why I should explain certain things to certain people about what tomorrow means to me. Having an invisible disability is better then a visible one but can cause havoc and drama and I’m into neither right now.

The best part of being back aside from seeing loved ones is sleeping in my own bed and visiting my things.