Carlos I (300 words)

It's been a long time coming, but I think I'm finally a New Yorker.

For the first 18 months or so, I would find myself out and about--driving somewhere, walking through a parking lot--and confused by the vast array of New York license plates, or other references to the State of New York. It took a second or two to sink in that, no, I'm a New Yorker these days and all of these plates are not, in fact, as odd as I think they are.

Some point during the last 3 months, that stopped. I'm not surprised to find myself here; I'm taking it for granted. Funny thing is, though, I can't decide whether taking it for granted is a good thing because it means I'm settled in, or whether it's a bad thing because it means I've become complacent.

I've said many times before that I never pictured myself living in New York. On my big list of "places I want to live some day" it hovered right around number 36--between Oklahoma and South Dakota so when I accepted my position and moved here nobody was more surprised than I.

I shouldn't have been.

One of our dogs, Carlos, was a roundabout rescue whose story I'll save for another post. What's important to this one is that we were driving along the New York Thruway (which I thought was all there was to the state until moving here) when we got the call that Carlos was in trouble and we needed to rescue him.

Commuter Dad, when he was here last weekend, walked in and said hello to Carlos then stopped and looked around as though something had just clicked. "You know the rest area just up the Thruway from our exit?"

"Yeah?"

"That's where we were when we got the call about Carlos. He's the one who picked New York. Now it all makes sense."