Old Friends Are Gold

To the ones I can sit for two hours with or twelve and we never quite get to the end of the conversation:
You Are Awesome. 

When did we grow up enough to be married, to have children, to have careers, and aging parents?  Hell, when did we ever get old enough to drive, or vote, or drink, or rent a car? 

And yet here we are, sitting at the bar (the fancy one with tablecloths and candles over bottomless margaritas and buckets of salsa) talking about our few grandparents that are left, our parents that love you like you're their own and me like I'm the daughter that got away (that's a longer story isn't it?), and checking the time in case one of us needs to get home to nurse. 

I love you old friends.  I am so blessed, or lucky, or smart, or however one decides is most appropriate to describe someone who gets to have friends that knew them in their awkward stages, who knew them at their highest and loved them through their lowest, and still wants to drink bottles of wine and figure out the problems of the world together.

Lovelies

About a year and a half ago I got to finally meet Lilly in San Francisco, through our mutual friend Tommy.  Lilly's sister Fuzzy used to live with Tommy in Brooklyn, and I met her for the first time when we were first visiting NYC last January.  Now, Lilly is living in an apartment in Loring Park with their cousin Nora, and Fuzzy lives in the Whittier neighborhood.  A few days after I moved in, we figured out we live two short blocks away from each other.

I got to be sister wives with them for Halloween, along with Chelsea.  I also get to hang out with another cousin Lyz a lot.  I met Fuzzy and Lilly's mom, she told me welcome to the clan.  It make my heart smile.

These women are some that make me happy I get to be one, happy that I live here, happy to be tall, happy to be alive.  They are, individually or as a group, incredible.  Along with my loves Katie, Kate, Lauren, Erin, Anna, and Stephanie (and a few members of the male species too) they have made this city feel like home. 

I saw this video today on Fuzzy's blog.  Hard to believe, but she's even more wonderful in real life.


working from home from Fuzzy on Vimeo.

Tick Tock

Who knew?  The maternal clock is not a myth.  I always thought it sounded a little far-fetched, maybe an excuse for women who wanted to settle (sell-out?).  This may sound uncharitable, but it was so foreign.  Until very recently I was not sure I ever wanted kids of my own.

I just spent five minutes crying over photos of my dear friend (and ex-boyfriend) and his girlfriend and their newborn baby.  The way they looked at each other and they way they look at their baby was overwhelming.  It's not that he once loved me, and it's not that I want a baby now, but something inside me twinged...   I want that one day, and I want one day to be not so far away.

I spent last week in a house on a beach in North Carolina on vacation with a family that I've known for a long time.  We adopted each other when I was a girl and the neighbor girl decided we would be friends, and now that we're grown I'm getting to know the neighbor brother I grew up with in a whole new way.  He has two kids with whom I spent days playing on the beach and nights reading books to these beautiful blondes, and it makes me sad to not know how much they'll remember the next time I see them.  I feel drawn to their father in part because I see him as that, a father, a loving and devoted father.  I see in him how I want the father to my children to be.  Until now, this is not a quality that I ever would have looked for or particularly valued in a man.  But now it seems so inherent to the quality of the person as a whole I can't imagine not taking this into consideration.

So what now?  I guess for now I make sure to be really careful about birth control and start thinking more than a year out, so one day soon I can not be careful about birth control.

Warning

Do not tell me "I can't get you out of my head" if you want to be out of mine.
Especially when it's based on little more than a few hours and a healthy dose of chemistry.  Especially when preceded with the words "I don't know what you did to me but..."  Especially when certain specifics seem to align themselves just right, yet others seem so impossible.  Especially when I believe you actually have the will and the way to make it more than just potential, more then a far-off fantasy of maybe-one-more-night-together.

Jonesin'

I have got such a girl crush...

Manicures, Music, and Mangia Mangia! (or NY Winter Adventure pt. 4)

Monday was another late start, although we did manage to get out of bed before noon.  First thing we had to take care of was getting our nails done, as a manicure only lasts about two hours in my normal life I was determined to have one for at least part of my vacation.  (And the toes are important too, I don't care if nobody is going to see them.)

We then visited some Columbia buildings to soak in some of that Ivy.  Kidding; Megan had to get a replacement for her missing student ID, but I did get to see some of the inner part of campus.  It's interesting, being buildings of higher education again.  It reminds me that I really don't miss being a student, more than six years later.

We headed a couple stops south on the 1 to go to buy some pretty undergarments for ourselves.  I think a lot of people... well, a lot of men would be really surprised by all the technicality and pulling and pushing and stretching and tucking that goes into fitting a brassiere properly.  It was the first time I'd had anybody be so thorough, and I can't imagine going back to the children that they've begun hiring other lingerie stores.  (I'm good with teens having jobs, but I don't want somebody that's been alive for less time than I've been having my period to tell me how my bra should fit.  At least give me somebody who might understand something about gaining and losing more than puberty weight.  I digress.)

From there we headed further uptown to meet some lovelies (Leah, Niki, wonderful) and have a little bite and see a classical music recital.  This is a perfect example of how we grew up amongst the most wonderful folks in the world:  We grew up in the same neighborhood as Sarah, and she and Leah are still very close, and Sarah lives in NY with her girlfriend who is a professional pianist.  She was playing in a show that night, which Sarah had written Leah about, so Leah passed the word so we all trotted downtown and culturized ourselves.  It was warm and wonderful and lovely.

Megan and I ended up cutting out a little early because we wanted to get dinner at her favorite local haunt, an Italian place called Pisticci that's just around the corner from her apartment.  We sat right at the bar and started with one of the more delicious cocktails I've had in a while, involving whiskey, reduced apple cider, and just a bit of cinnamon - perfect for the bitter cold that we were still moving through.  We had a decent bottle of wine and some quality comfort food that was perfect that night.  The highlight was the spinach salad with pancetta and the funny friendly employees who laughed at almost all of my funny bits.  (Definitely not the tiramisu that Megan forced down my throat at the end that I was much too full and drunk to appreciate.  Sorry Megan.)

 

We were very happy by the time we got home three minutes later, and I fell on the floor and almost peed my pants when Megan tried pulling down the blinds but instead pulled the whole thing off and knocked over a vase with dead flowers and then could just stand there and say, "shit".  About half hour later when I finally got off the floor and stopped taking funny pictures of Megan (which are all actually too fuzzy to tell what they are) we drank as much water as we could while balancing out the high culture we had experienced earlier by watching Jersey Shore on her computer.

We should have known we needed to stretch our eating and drinking stomachs for the next day...  11 Madison Park, more Broadway, and wine with Binty.