i lived in a single family home in westchester, nj with my lovely husband and two cats.  i work in manhattan in the jewelry design industry, and i absolutely love leaving manhattan at the end of the day.  i love coming home to spend time with my husband, to read, to write, or to watch reruns of vanderpump rules.  my social life occurs mostly outside of the city, but occasionally i spend time there - mostly for dinners or drinks with friends after work.  these occasions often serve to reinforce my happiness in my small new jersey town.  

take last night for example.  i accompany a friend to a cocktail party for a new york public library group, of which she is a member. enter "new york guy".  after an oscar-worthy performance attending to urgent emails on his phone, he moseys over to our high top table, explaining awkwardly that he is waiting for his friend and he has nobody else to talk to.  fine - let's do this.  after a series of all too familiar indirect questions in which he gathers the following information from us - relationship status, career, college (always curious to me since we all graduated college close to 10 years ago), the pre-screening test is almost over.  i have only one strike so far because i'm married, although that tends not to phase this particular breed of new york guy.  onto the final question - "where in the city do you live?"  i proudly answer first, "oh, i don't live in the city. i live in new jersey."  my response elicits a palpable reaction from new york guy, as if i had told him i live on hyperion, one of saturn's 62 moons.  his verbal response is one of wonderment, questioning how i get into the city every day, as if the port authority operates to keep new jerseyans like me out of manhattan.  as i begin to tell him that i take the train and it is actually really great - i read, catch up on emails, write (in this case about assholes like him), he has already rapidly shifted his attention to my friend - single and living in chelsea.  they chat for a few minutes until she realizes she can no longer suffer through the details of his solar investments, and we move on.  thanks for the riveting conversation, ny guy. 

the rest of the evening consists of a series of conversations - some interesting, most not, in which i talk to a handful of people who take themselves very seriously.  that evening, my husband picks me up from the train station in our car, which we use to drive places outside a 15 mile radius on the weekends.  when we get home, i eat a bowl of cereal on my large dining room table where we can seat more than a few friends for parties.  i look out at our private backyard and look forward to spending time out there in the spring.  i love my new jersey life.