Full Circle

It seems just like yesterday.
 (Except I was not tan and blonde yesterday.)

As I wind down my time here, one theme that keeps repeating itself is how everything that's happened in New York seems to have come full circle.

When The BFF and I arrived four years ago this week, we stayed in our wonderfully generous friends Nicki and Dana's apartment in the heart of Greenwich Village. The two of us shared their futon, one that when folded out touched almost four walls of the living room nook. 

We were new to New York, waiting to start our jobs a few weeks later. While scouring for apartment listings day in and day out was not particularly great (read: traumatizing), those two weeks were perfect for helping us fall in love with the city - for making us feel like we belonged.

Now, all these years later, the four of us are still friends (plus now we've gotten to know all their other, wonderful college friends living here too). While we've been busy with our own lives (them getting married and finishing grad school; me with....eating?), it's always fun when we are together.

So I was more than excited last Sunday when I got to spend the day with Nicki and her fiance at their beautiful, adult apartment. It was a miserably cold day, the kind that makes you instantly regret leaving your bed. (I got past this by donning sweatpants because my Pajama Jeans haven't come in the mail (joke! but seriously I kind of want them).)

After a few hours there, we decided to cross Shake Shack off my bucket list and head to Dana's (equally adult) apartment to see her too. This is where the problems started.

You see, as I already mentioned, it was cold. Too frigid to have any part of the skin showing with leggings. And it was Sunday so regular pants were out. (Who do you think we are, Kate Middleton?) This only left Nicki with the choice of the pants she had on. Snowflake fleece pajama pants. But - alas- they are "indoor only" pants.

Because, I mean, if you can't hold some things sacred, what is the point of life? So after hour(s) debate about what to do, she finally left her apartment sporting some snowflakes. As we approached the shack in the middle of Madison Square Park, I instructed Nicki that if they asked her for a name on the order she had to say Snowflake. Because why not?

Unfortunately you can't read it, but it DOES
say Snowflake as the order name. Priceless.

After we ordered our (delicious, gluttonous) to-go meal, the woman asked The Question. Nicki stood there like a giggly deer frozen in the headlights as I coaxed her from the sideline, "Say it! Say it!"

And she did. My Snowflake made me proud. The woman at the register (luckily) thought it was funny and laughed along with us.

When our food was ready, we braced the wind whipping through the buildings and made our way down Park Ave South (my old neighborhood) toward Dana's.

I remember the first time The BFF walked those streets. All of the spots I now know by heart, new for the first time. The memories we made in that area of the city will remain long after we're gone.

(The calories consumed at Shake Shack will probably do the same. Damnit.)

But it's great to be able to come full circle, measure our current selves versus our past. And if the aforementioned story says anything about us, it's that while in some respects we are so different, we aren't so mature that we can't laugh about indoor pajama pant nicknames. (Thank God.)

Because what would be the point?