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.

June Was a Big Month...

Which should explain why I only published three blogs over the month.

I was my best friends maid of honor and shared a magical weekend with her family, mine, and a group of some of the most wonderful people on the planet.  I loved taking charge and knowing what needed to be done without her having to tell me, I loved feeling like I was really helping her marry this man, whom I love too; I loved being around all the people, I loved the ceremony of it all, I loved the kids, I loved staying up until sunrise every night with her brother who became a man and a father in the eight years since I had last seen him, I loved all the music and drinking and food, all the quotations that only those of us who were around all weekend really get ("that's what she said"), I loved my sister being such a help to me and everyone and my parents being able to celebrate with us, I loved being around my oldest and best friends for days straight, and I love being included in everything this family that invited me in 20 years ago did.

I spent about 36 hours in Virginia for a wedding that most of this country would consider invalid.  The 'best-of-times-worst-of-times' year of my life was survived because of a small group of friends, a few of whom have survived in this group we call the Jager Girls.  (Yes, that Jager.)  That year in Fayetteville we drank a lot, we fought a little, we never got arrested, and together we survived what was for most of us the most difficult year of our lives.  They are the ones that didn't ask but just showed up after Brendan died; they cooked and brought liquor (Jager, duh) and cigarettes, distraction, tissues, hugs, and so much love.
Around that time two years ago Mel was about to leave the job she had held and excelled at for most of her adult life because they said she couldn't love Dawn and still do her job.  (They are proof, by the way, that that rule is bullshit.)  Dawn and Mel live together in Virginia now and as of early June are happily (and legally, thanks to the District of Columbia) married.  I got to be there to celebrate, help with a garter, drink a lot, cry a little, laugh more than anything, and love some of my favorite women (and some of their children) in the world.

My sister spent the last three years, arguably the most difficult of her life, working on a masters degree from a very important and very expensive school.  She'd argue the ivy is bullshit but damn if it doesn't have a nice ring to it.  She finished in May.  In June (the day I came back to Madison from VA) we had a nice little party for her.  Our sister from another mister gave us the theme, my mom and I brainstormed the map as guestbook, I found Dora napkins, and we had enough sparkling goodness that Megan had a full glass the whole night.  It was lovely.

The day after Megan's party was the day before the 2-year mark of our brother dying.  This year it rained, and there were fewer people, but it was just about perfect.  There was printing and drinking and crying and laughing.  Brendan was remembered, and toasted more than once.  This sting is so much less now than it was even a year ago, yet the absence is larger than ever.  It's been that much longer since I heard him laugh, since I heard him say "HI sister...".  I have some new shirts, and Solve has many more fans.  He'll never be gone, but my life will never be whole.

A few days later, I came back to California.  I wasn't as happy as I should have been to come home, but seeing Aunt and Uncle and the dogs (who helped Uncle pick me up from the bus stop, along with a cold beer hidden under an ice pack) made it warm and loving. 

Now I am moving forward.  Spending lots of time on things that feel good and spending enough time on things that I have to.  I am making decisions and sticking to them.  I am practicing trusting myself.  I am feeling loved.  I am feeling hope.  I am so excited for what's to come.  I am 10 days in to being 29, and it's going to be a great year.

Across The Park and Two Decades

Two weeks ago I was celebrating the last single days of my best friend.
We helped her marry her best friend, a man I wouldn't have imagined her with and cannot now imagine her without.
I grew up a half a block away from her family, I've been scolded and celebrated by her mom as I have my own, we've cried and laughed together more times than can be counted, and now she's with the man she is going to make a family with.
Her brother and sisters have children now, beautiful blonde, funny, smart little kids that I couldn't help but stare at. These kids that shared the park with me are now adults, beautiful and handsome, raising kids that I actually want to be around.
I spent these weeks thinking about what is really important. This life is short, and this life is now. If I am always waiting for it to start, I'm not really living am I? What's really important is not what grand imaginations I entertained since I was a teenager, but rather what makes me feel good, what calms me, what brings me safety and celebration now.
I want to leave my imprint on the world in a way that will carry love forward past when I am gone. I want to be a mother. I want to raise children to be better and smarter and happier than have ever been.
It is said that friends are the family you choose, and I'd choose her and the whole clan from across the park over and over again.

Wonderful Day

I'm in Minneapolis for my best friend's wedding.
Tonight is the bachelorette party, tomorrow is the bridal shower lunch, then nails/rehearsal/meat raffle/rehearsal dinner on Saturday, then the big shebang on Sunday.
I arrived last night and the bride, groom, best man (who happens to be the bride's brother, who I grew up with too but haven't seen since before he had babies), and me (maid of honor!) went to a bar, drank lots, ate a little, and made friends with everybody.
I woke up to coffee and sticky buns retrieved by the boys. Katie and I talked about our families, and how mine gets to be here for the wedding; we talked about our crazy kitty that belongs to Katie but I helped raise and is currently entertaining herself by flitting about the room manically; we've talked about poems and music and love and crying. We are still nursing our hangovers.

I couldn't be more happy right now. It is a beautiful wonderful day.

Aprimay

OMG!

Hi EndOfApril!  I so did not expect to see you here so soon!

If I would have known you were coming, I would have finished so much more shit on my to-do list/cleaned my winter weary cobweb riddled windows/shaved my legs.  (That last one's a stretch but I try to go all out for guests, even if they're unexpected and temporary.)

Since you really surprised me this time (no, really, it is ok, really, seriously... seriously it's fine...  It will be fine...) I didn't get groceries/meet deadlines/practice choir/call anyone back that I was supposed to.  But you know I can pull a party out of nowhere so let's get shakin'.  Would saltines and cheap vodka and ginger ale be ok?  What's that?  You're on a no-carb diet?  Is that a crack on my gaining weight instead of losing it before my best friends' wedding in a month and a half that I haven't finished planning the bachelorette party for yet?  (Ok.  You're going to have to lay off, I told you this is a surprise visit.)  No?  Well my apologies, it's just that's what I have leftover from my little nausea episode last week.

No, no, no chance it was morning sickness.  Thanks for asking I guess, you're the 3rd person so I guess I still seem like I might be having fun/getting some action/being irresponsible.

Seriously, you don't have to go.  What's that?  May is on his way?!?!?!?  Well f#*@.  You can't just stay a little longer instead, make him wait a little?  Fine.  No, it's fine.  Have a nice year I guess.  I'll see you again in threehundredwhatever days.  (What now?  If I knew the exact amount of days maybe you wouldn't be a surprise?  You know what, no need to get snarky.  Here, have a saltine for the road.)

Scatterbrained

My mind is all over the place this week...

Americans who tried to take Haitian children across the border to a Dominican orphanage have been charged with abduction.  The whole story is creepy to me, especially that they keep saying they were just trying to do God's work, and that they're looking to God for a positive outcome.

I had weekends off last month and I've been using the time to get caught up with friends, take care of loose ends that have been dangling for months, and just cavorting and sin in general.  There's been a lot of eating, drinking, laughing.  It has felt really good, but as I start to get a little more focused and sober some of the questions I was dealing with before are coming back in even higher relief and with more urgency...
How can I trust my emotions?
How can I trust anybody else?
Where do I want to be?
What do I want to do?
How many rules will my moral compass allow me to break?
How much discreetness before it becomes secrecy, and how much secrecy before it becomes lying?

Oscar nominations were announced, and ever since I was a kid I've been a sucker for the Academy Awards.  I get excited for the nominations, and then I feel all this pressure to see movies before the awards.  I never see all the ones I want, yet I never let myself off the hook.  It's not even fun, yet I do it year after year.  Maybe it's residual Irish/German/Catholic guilt leftover from my parents generation.  The same guilt that gets me when I'm late in Thank-You notes, when I don't call my parents back, when I think about my messy room...

We got ducks last week.  A neighbor winery was diverging of it's assets, and Colleen said we'd take the ducks.  She and I hopped in the Element with some boxes and came back six ducks and a bunch of duck poop heavier.  They are massive - I was worried about them in with the chickens but they're about as big as the rooster so not so worried anymore.  Today's the first day they're waddling around outside the pen.  At first I felt a little emotional about them, they've got such cute quacks, but now I'm totally ok with the foie gras and confit that is to come.

I have learned some intimate things in the past month about myself, and about some others in my life, all whom I consider to be at the very least close friends.  It has been entertaining, and educational, and a little emotional.  (Hey look at that!  Three E's.)   I wish I could share more but I can't until I get it all a little bit more sorted out in my own head.  Lesson - keep yourself open to learning from those that you think you know already.  The universe has surprises for all of us, and some of them are bound to be good.

Champagne Cart, Maria, and Maybe the 3rd bottle IS a Mistake... (or NY Winter Adventure pt. 5)

We knew our Tuesday lunch was going to be a doozy but I don't think we knew knew...

We had wanted to do a splurge meal, and since Colleen said that when she was in town last spring the best meal she had was at Eleven Madison Park, we decided a lunch there would be a good treat.  The lunch menu is actually pretty reasonable priced (especially considering the real estate, as Megan pointed out in a whisper about a half dozen times) so with Christmas money in hand we were ready to be dazzled.

Within three minutes of entering the restaurant four people had already attended to us, and that was a pretty good indicator of what we were in for.  I fell a little bit in love with the place as soon as our waiter asked if he should bring over the champagne cart.  (Champagne cart?!  A cart that exists for the sole purpose of getting a selection of cold champagne closer to me?!  Ummm Yes.)  He should.  He did.  We toasted.  Then we ate, and drank, and repeated.  There was an amuse-bouche followed by three courses each of intricate, beautiful, technically perfect and most importantly delicious food.  The highlights:a veloute (that means velvet I learned!) of butternut squash being poured around a plate already in front of me; Megan's face when the waiter showed her what to do with the bowl of bone marrow covered in some sort of light creamy stuff served with her beef tenderloin; our waiter bringing us a dish of macaroons with our coffee and promised it wouldn't be at all filling but wanted us to have something sweet to finish even though we hadn't ordered dessert (way too full).

So what is so special about it?  It is not just the food, or the wine, or the dessert, or the environment.  I think in this situation the whole was much greater than the sum of its parts.  We easily could have been attended on less than we were, but they went above and beyond with everything they did.  I guess this is standard for four-star dining, but it was new to us.  What I was probably most impressed with (aside from the food and the wine list. which was so beautiful and extensive that I wanted to take it with me and read it like a novel) was how good-humored everyone was as they went about their jobs.  From the sommelier to the man refilling our water to the chef to the woman who took our coats - everyone not only seemed happy to do what they were doing, but to do it for us.  Seamlessly.

Ideally after this lunch we would have had a bed or a couch in a quiet dark place to lie down on for a few hours, but we had planned on staying out through West Side Story that was a gift from our parents for that night so we bundled up and off we went.

We tried to do some shopping but other than finally finding the boots I had been searching for, we probably had the most fun when we finally decided we could quit and stood in front of the store windows with a view of Union Square taking pictures of each others reflection for twenty minutes.

We headed uptown to Times Square to take some jump shots and then get cozy with the tourists at Junior's waiting to go to the 7:00 shows.  Still being full from lunch we ordered drinks to tide us over and I enjoyed the best martini I've had in months.  This was also the location of that days reality check from Megan:  When I commented on how many good looking men I'd seen at every establishment we'd been to that week and that I felt like I was in a candy store she reminded me that there was such a disproportionate number of them because most of them were probably trying to be in the entertainment business.  Entertainers that make a damn good martini anyway.

West Side Story was wonderful because we grew up watching nothing but musicals on TV and have probably seen the movie two dozen times.  (I was shocked and disturbed when I found out Natalie Wood wasn't Latina.  Not so much that they would have a white actress play that role but more because it ruined the fantasy for me.)  It was also a good contrast to Fela from a couple nights before, WSS being very much the standard song and dance number you expect from Broadway.  This version does have a lot of Spanish mixed in which I think made the story, which I realize now is pretty over-the-top, that much easier to get carried away by.

After the show we skipped outta there to head north to meet my Binty, who met us at our subway stop to come have lots of wine and a sleepover.  She's been one of my besties since I met her in health class freshman year in high school, and the three of us definitely solved some of the worlds problems by the end of our second bottle of wine that night.

Coming up the next day was treats in Soho and fun in Brooklyn - a pretty darn good way to spend my last day in New York.