So long, 2009 (No seriously, it was soooo looong.)

Ah, 2009. You heartbreaker you.

As I sit in my Charlotte apartment with sun blazing through my windows, I think of the New York apartment in which I began this year: a dark, first floor walk up with a gorgeous view of a brick wall. Based on the amount of light coming through the windows, I couldn’t ever tell whether it was day or night without checking a clock. Nonetheless, I joyfully trudged through snow and sleet to get to my magazine internship, where my work involved grueling days of discussing Real Housewives of Orange County with the creative director on beauty shoots, picking up cupcakes to go meet Zac Efron, or scooping books, makeup, and clothes galore off of the freebie table. (I think I may have made some copies at one time or another as well.)

I imagined a life in which I teetered on stilettos as the beauty editor at a women’s magazine, yelled at underlings, and became the close confidante of the editor in chief. Maybe I could have even done some Today Show appearances showcasing new beauty trends. (What can I say? The camera loves my face. Plus, I have a knack for discussing current events. Like the latest episode of Real Housewives.)

While I didn’t get offered a position at said magazine, I did get offered an art assistant position at some teenybopper (imagine Tiger Beat) magazine. They wanted to pay me $10/hr and were located about thirty minutes outside of the city in New Jersey. During the interview, they flat out told me that “this isn’t a job for someone who is trying to support themselves.”

NEWSFLASH: if I didn’t have to support myself, I wouldn't get a job. I would be perfectly fine living a life of leisure like they do on Real Housewives. Did I mention this job was in New Jersey? Decision made.

Somehow, during all of this, I had begun to think that New York wasn’t for me. (Shocker.) The horrible weather, shoebox apartments, and job offers from New Jersey had started to wear me down. I was tired of ambulance sirens, heat emanating off of the concrete, and people. People are everywhere in New York. They are pushed up next to you in the subway, brushing past you in stores, and cutting in front of you on the sidewalk. They talk loudly on their cell phones, sing along to their ipods, or sometimes just carry on conversations with themselves.

I realized I wanted more out of life than a fancy job title and a closet full of designer clothes. (Not that I had either of those, but obviously that’s where I was headed.) New Yorkers live to work, but I wanted to work to live. I wanted a job and a life that had a sense of purpose, whatever that entailed.

So I made the leap of faith to head back below the Mason-Dixon line to Charlotte, a city I had spent the past four summers living and working in. I sublet my apartment, bought a car, and headed south. Three weeks later, I had a job as a kindergarten Montessori teacher. Three weeks. A few days later, my lovely friend Elise and I found a gorgeous two bedroom apartment (pool views! washer and dryer included!) for which a I pay about a third of what I did in NYC.

These days, instead of getting calls from creative directors, I get kids coming up to me on the playground yelling “Miss Ensley, I just farted and a little bit of poop came out in my pants!” Hmmm.

I also get storytime, naptime, and little hands that magically find their way into mine while walking down the hallway.

Ah, 2009. You taught me to be more open minded and to never say never. Within twelve months, you had given me everything I thought I had always wanted-internships, a big city, a new boyfriend-but I realized that just because it seems perfect doesn’t mean it’s a good fit. It took me finding out what I don’t want to be (a waitress, an angry New Yorker) in order to find out what it was I really wanted, which is everything I have now.

Happy 2010. Carpe diem.

It's Not Me, It's You

I definitely didn’t see this coming. After nine months together, I just broke up with someone tall, dark, and handsome, who I've had a crush on since I was a teenager. He's rich, thrilling, lives to work and never sleeps. For a while, I thought he was The One.

I just broke up with New York City.

I thought we would be the perfect match. When we first got together, it was the middle of winter, so I assumed any problems we had would only get better come spring. As summer showed up, he made promises of sunny days and better jobs. Instead, he was rainy, cold, and miserable most of the time. He was distant and didn’t seem to care whether I was stuck at home waiting for him to cheer up, and he certainly didn’t follow through with the promise of a job. He caused fights between my friends and I. Plus, I thought he smelled like garbage and urine. (Hey, pheromones are pheromones.) I waited for things to get better. They didn’t.

New York, if you were a real boy, I would have soooo broken up with you before graduation.

I’ve learned that maybe relationships that seem perfect from a distance aren’t always so great when seen up close. Before New York, I thought happiness meant sky-high heels and fancy Meatpacking clubs. Turns out I’d rather be in flip-flops with a sweating Bud Light in my hand any day of the week. Life is what you make it. (Apparently, I make it country.)

Like all breakups that are meant to be, I feel nostalgic about the good times and am trying to iron over the bad. I feel inspired and new and more like me than I have in a very long time. I know there is a better fit out there for me somewhere, and I’m excited to find it.

And if I never hear the wail of a siren again, it will be too soon.

We put the "fun" in dysfunctional

As it turns out, a “fun family reunion” is not an oxymoron, even if you are all crammed into the Courtyard Marriot in Beckley, West Virginia. (Never heard of it? Not surprised. ) Here, a few requirements to keep things running smoothly:

• A good response to “How’s the job search going?”. Mine consisted of “Well, my parents had to pay for this plane ticket to get me here soo…” The conversation ended rather quickly after that.

• Scattegories. Makes the hours between meals fly by! (Though I don’t need Google to tell me “wooie wooie” disease doesn’t exist. Nice try.)

• Tequila. One aunt brought hers in an earth friendly stainless steel thermos, but a water bottle shoved in your tote bag works just as well.

• A handy sweater. As in “good thing I have this handy sweater!” when your grandparents insist you are freezing cold. Which they will. Every. single. time. they reach over to sweetly pat your hand.

• An outing to Jimmie’s Place. One of about four bars in Beckley, it has no windows and a bartender with teased bangs named Charla (pronounced CH-arla. She’s named after her dad, Charlie. Go figure.) The price of seven people drinking Bud Light for three hours? $25.00. Wonderful West Virginia, indeed!

• Teaching seven year olds the Art of the Prank Phone Call. (Even if their prank calls merely involved them shouting “hola amigos!” before dramatically hanging up. Apparently this was intended to “confuse” the caller. I have a feeling they were already pretty confused.)

• A DUI checkpoint, just to keep things exciting. We didn’t get stopped, but only because the po-po were breaking it down. At 11pm. Luckily the driver had been nursing one Corona over a three hour period, but it got everyone’s heart rate up a little.

Note to self: while peach cobbler is delicious, eating half the pan is a bad idea and may induce vomiting. Also, thinking you can keep up with your fratty nineteen year old cousin while drinking Jack and Cokes may result in you getting a little toasted and calling him a “d-bag”. Sorry Reilly.

I Heart You, NY (well, most of the time)

I just spent the smartest $125 of my life on a window air conditioning unit.

Open summer windows allow some to lull themselves to sleep to the buzz of cicadas, the sound of ocean waves breaking on sand, or the next-door neighbor’s yapping dog.

Instead, as I peel off my sweaty restaurant uniform (whoever mandated black pants in July is a sadist) after a ten hour workday and bus ride home, the sweet sound of vomiting drifts towards my ears. By “sweet”, I mean it sounds like this girl drank about a gallon of Smirnoff Ice and is now suffering from the drunken, splattering sort of retching. Hitting-the-concrete-and-bouncing-back-up-kind-of-retching. i.e.: Disgusting.

Something our broker failed to mention while we signed our lease: my window’s direct proximity over the garbage disposal area would result in many a jolted wake up on garbage day, as well as a smattering of projectile vomit. Oversight, indeed.

Despite the nausea, I have to admit this is also what I love about New York. Only here would I pay $1,000 in rent to hear vomiting out of my window and have a view of a toilet graveyard from my back patio. The biggest difference between the Big Apple and Anywhere, USA is that we’re all in this together. There is no privacy or personal space. On the bus ride to work I am usually sandwiched between a homeless man who apparently bathes in his own urine and woman toting a Birkin who probably bathes in Evian. We cannot retreat to our suburban cocoons of cars, malls, or privacy fences .

So I’m sleeping more soundly these days thanks to the soft hum of my window unit. But some mornings I can still hear the clink of bottles as the recyclables go out. And like a good New Yorker, I just roll over and fall right back asleep.

Sweet Summertime

Summer is definitely different in the Big Apple. Here, a few of my seasonal requirements:

1. LifeSavers Wint-O-Green mints. Don't ask, but I basically freebase them.

2. Road trips. To anywhere, really. As long as we're on the open road and I'm not behind the wheel.

3. The smell of Coppertone. This one is a given, but luckily New Yorkers slather in on by the truckload, being so pasty white as they are. It's practically floating in the air.

4. Sailboats. Preferably Sunfish with bunches of giggling campers in them.

5. Swimming pools. In lieu of anything closely resembling one in this concrete jungle I call home, I've settled for the rooftop deck at my gym. Close, but no cigar. What are you supposed to do when you get all sweaty? Marinate?

6. The hum of a lawn mower. Now I settle for muffled sirens.

7. Icy-cold A/C as I'm huddled inside watching mindless television. Real Housewives marathon, anyone?

8. Lake Wylie, SC.

9. Iced coffee. (Is a gallon a day too much? Thought so.)

10. Outdoor/daytime drinking. It's a lot easier to justify that Blockhead's margarita marathon because it is just such a beautiful day outside! I am simply enjoying the weather.

It's funny how a move to New York will make you appreciate the simple things. What are YOUR summer checklists?

May I Take Your (Fendi) Bag?

Being the wily temp-tress that I am, I was beyond excited to land a three-day gig at Fendi. Fendi, as in gold and glamour and interlocking capitals F’s that scream “cold hard cash!” I knew I would do such a great job answering phones or whatnot that they would practically beg me to accept a full-time job with them while throwing Spy bags my direction.

Turns out, my assignment was the Fendi sample sale.

Not to be discouraged, I reminded myself that, besides “free”, “sale” IS my favorite word in the English language. The hour before the event started, I eagerly awaited my job placement while the employees got to set aside a few items (a “few” being bags and bags of fur coats and strange, shearling purses). Since I still can’t afford a $4,900 bag, even when it is 75% off, I spent a lot of time picking up items, pretending to examine them carefully, and putting them back down. The entire Fendi line seems a little like J. Lo’s wet dream. Racks and racks of wildly colored fur coats, cut out leather jackets, and sunglasses with more bling than Lil Wayne’s grill were common offenders.

Finally, it was time for job assignments. Where was mine?

Coat check. Naturally.

I spent the next four and a half hours lifting various Birkins, Balenciagas, and Prada onto racks until my arms were literally shaking. Dear Women of America: when planning on coming to a sample sale, please leave your bowling balls and bricks at home. I can’t imagine what could have possibly weighed more, unless it was a body bag in which said body had ingested various bowling balls. Sometimes it took one of the interns and me both just to get a bag from one rack to another. Get a rolling suitcase! It could practically see the wallets of the nation’s chiropractors thickening.

The silver lining is that by tomorrow I expect my arms to look like Michelle Obama’s after all that lifting. And they gave us free pizza. Very un-Fendi, very Ensley, very delicious.

Cats and a muumuu: One step closer

This video aside, what's a self-proclaimed "cool" New York girl to do on a Saturday night?

Why, read her book and go to bed, of course!

In all fairness, I DID work in hell (I mean, the restaurant) until midnight, but for some reason finding out the ending of "Shopaholic and Baby" won over going out and having a life. (Spoiler alert: she has a baby. Huge shock.)

While most fabulous 20-somethings are waking up this morning, hungover and trying to figure out how to get rid of the stranger they woke up next to...I cleaned. ( I may have also been watching Gilmore Girls at the same time. It's terminal). By "cleaned" I mean I scrubbed the hell out of my apartment. You may need sunglasses to handle how sparkling our stainless steel appliances and granite countertops are, THAT is how clean this apartment is. There may have been a Swiffer-mopping incident as well.

Needless to say, the "plan" is not going well. The only thing worse could be a Home Shopping Network Addiction! (Stay tuned.)