As anyone who has spent a significant amount of time there does, I threatened leaving New York City often during my tenure. Like a kid loudly plotting to run away from home I made my intentions known, killing countless cocktail party conversations, souring enthusiasts, responding with a disproportionate passion to rhetorical questions, such as, “Don’t you fucking love this place?”

I did. At first Then it became a love-hate. And then it turned into a hate-fuck. And it cycled through that for 20 years, and then just when it looked like nothing would ever change, my childhood best friend told me that having a baby in the city was easy, like wearing a chubby purse, so Billy and I decided to go for it and SURPRISE, we got twins, which is more like being the purse that someone has stuffed multiple chubby babies into.

Last March our kids turned two and we had to get the f out of the city, even though our freelance jobs dictated that NYC was the Money Place. The Place where you Get Money. "We'll start online businesses" we said, all too confidently. "Let's just travel. As much as we can. Until they have to start school."

We figure we've got about 3 more years.

So in July we packed up our shit and drove to the Northwoods of Wisconsin, scene of the summers of my youth, but not before buying a ticket out come January, to Morocco and then to Spain, and Portugal, and then to who knows where because… why?

Because if I was going to finally leave the 5-ringed-burough-shit-show I needed to have a good story to tell?

Which is fine and all, narcissism aside, but it does become a bit more questionable with these 2-year-olds involved. Are we fucking them up? We put them in a daycare up here until we leave in January and they actually like school. Who likes school? They will probably never feel this way about school again and yet it's, “Sorry kids, say bye-bye to your friends and the pet guinea pig and picture day, Mommy wants to explore.” Wasn’t that right taken away from me when I decided to have kids?

Again, just to be clear, I did only decide to have one kid...

So we fly out in a month. Billy and I swerve between being giddy with panic and just so fucking tired. One thing is for certain tough, there aren't three other people in this universe that I'd rather dive into the abyss with. Here's hoping the abyss is cool.