The Thursday night theme song of my life

One of the few things I miss about living in New York is the convenience of everything. Within a five block radius of virtually anywhere in the city, you could find any kind of takeout food, at least two major supermarkets, a bodega, a drugstore, a gym or three, at least two dry cleaners, and a handful of neighborhood restaurants and bars worth popping in to if for no other reason than to say you have a neighborhood bar or restaurant. (Sometimes you do just want to go where everybody knows your name).

Not ironically, having everything at my fingertips was one of the things I was looking forward to leaving behind. I got so accustomed to having everything right there, right then, I became irrationally irritable any time I ever had to wait for something. Quite honestly, I was an impatient bitch. Because I'm far too young to start turning into an old crab, I thought that moving somewhere larger and slower might just be good for me.

And truthfully, it has been. Though you might not know it to look at or listen to me, I have mellowed out considerably in the last year. I don't necessarily scowl at the barista if they take too long to make my coffee. I accept that my errands may be on different sides of town and there may be traffic on the way. I can't buy Haagen Dazs or beer at 11 PM on Sunday? Oh well - I really didn't need it anyway. For the most part, change has been a good thing.

Lately, though, I've found myself missing the ease in which my friends and I used to spontaneously decide to meet up after work, choose a favorite spot in a well known neighborhood, and comiserate over our jobs or lack of boyfriends. No matter what time of day the email was sent out, someone would always be up for a drink - the bar and the companionship only a subway ride away. Happy hour would turn into the dinner hour, and sometimes, the witching hour, and problems were solved or at least forgotton for a little while.

Here, I am lucky that I have made some good friends with which I can continue to comiserate about work, about boys (that I am slowly feeling obligated to start referring to as men), about whatever, even though in all truthfulness we all really have quite fabulous lives and nothing really to complain about. But everything in LA is just so far apart! My friends in adjacent neighborhoods live at a minimum 5 or 6 miles away. Their neighborhood bar is the Four Seasons. Other friends live 15-20 miles away, over the hill and through the valley, and there is almost never any spontenaity - we typically plan a week in advance just to get drinks on a weekend night, at which point someone always ends up driving. Even if I had a friend next door to me, which, actually, I do, there is nowhere within walking distance to go. I know I live in one of the largest, busiest, most chic cities in the country, but honestly, half the time I feel like I've been banished to the grown-up hells of suburbia.

Don't get me wrong - it's not the heavy irresponsible drinking that I miss (she writes as her hand trembles from withdrawel), but the comfortable convenience of having my own Cheers gang so close with an open bar stool whenever I needed it. For someone as impatient as me, life doesn't get much better than that.