The Big Apple and it's dirty, rotten, stinking core.

Soon after I had my daughter Chloe I realized that New York City was not, like I had previously thought, the place I was going to spend the rest of my life.  The Bright Lights of the Big City were dimmed by the haze of pollution, stench of garbage and overpriced everything.  I knew that we had to leave.

The view from my street corner...

Pretty soon I was playing out Doomsday scenarios in my head where we were trapped in Harlem and the only way to escape the city was by boat from the Hudson river because all bridges and tunnels had been blocked off by guys with machine guns and tanks and police officers wearing gas masks.  That may seem crazy and extremist (and it totally is), but that actually happened to me in NYC after 9/11.  Well, not the boat in the river, but the army dudes with machine guns and tanks and gas masks, all true.  We have an inflatable raft with three life vests (safety first) and nary an oar for just that reason.

We also have a "Bug-out Bag", which contains all of the necessary items one would need to survive the apocalypse in Washington Heights; a lantern, a tent, an "Official" Bear Grylls survivor kit, a propane burner (with two partially filled mini propane tanks because, duh, two is always better than one), and a hammock.

Looking back, this may have been a direct result of my husband forcing me to watch "Doomsday Preppers" on NatGeo with him.  Or possibly because I knew this girl, also a Prepper, who will be appearing on a spin-off show called "Pimp My Prep".  I couldn't make this shit up.  I mean seriously, she buys powdered milk and solar ovens and Potassium Iodide pills (she also has gas masks)...

She also had a ton of edible plants growing in her apartment.  Which was actually pretty awesome.  She had things I didn't even know you could grow indoors like a Kaffir lime tree and coffee plants (like 50 of them) and lemon grass.  Of course her apartment was maybe 400 square feet and the plants were all babies at the time so we'll see how that ends up working out for her.

Growing up in rural Massachusetts I was accustomed to country life, and even though I spent much of my youth trying to escape that life, I found myself running back towards it as fast as I could.  Which apparently isn’t very fast.  (Note to self:  Get back in shape.)

We took the first step by leaving Harlem and moving to the Jersey shore.  I know what you're thinking, and yes, we are only 20 minutes from Snooki and J-Wow's beach.  But, we're only 5 minutes from both Jon Bon Jovi and The Boss so I think they cancel each other out.  With my husband still working in midtown Manhattan our options for "rural living" within a reasonable commute are scant.  The urban sprawl of NYC spreading like vd on spring break. 

It was a first step though and we now have things like grass, trees, mosquitoes and free parking!  I could pass on the mosquitoes but life is rarely perfect and mosquitoes are much smaller than cockroaches.

Oh and that bit about the meeses bleeding out their ass and indestructible cockroaches...all true.