~OR~
“The thing about Twilite is you never know how long you’re going to be there.”
-Espy
True. Because sometimes you just stop in for a few post-work beers before heading on to other plans, and sometimes Twilite becomes the plan.
And the thing about my friends right now is: they don’t know that every time we are together, I am fighting back tears.
Because they are just that amazing.
Because I’m going to miss them that much.
~OR~
Do I drink too much? Very well then, I drink too much. I am large, I contain multitudes of reasons for drinking.
Tuesday. I love that the liquor store is still open when I get off work. (All the way ’til 7pm! Way to be, Utah!). I like feeling grown-up for buying Bulleit instead of Jack Daniel’s. I like cradling my brown paper wrapped bourbon in the crook of my arm like a baby on the walk home walk home. I like putting on my PJs as soon as I get home and drinking bourbon with water. I love a long bath with a stiff drink to keep me company and Tibetan take-out. I love closing the blinds, pushing back all the furniture and turning up my sweet new speakers for maximum danceability.
I don’t like working from 6am to 6pm with an hour-and-a-half lunch break that I use to run errands and bike home, where I arrive sweating and immediately begin to dread returning to work.
I don’t like puking in my mouth a little bit on the way to Second Job, because I have stress-induced acid reflux and spit up like a damned baby. Because I ate too fast and then drank water (breaking all the reflux rules!), and because I have developed a Pavlovian response to Second Job that causes stomach cramping and increased bile.
I don’t like feeling that my boss could not be happier to see me go, or rid of me soon enough.
I don’t like crying on desk, having to dry my eyes with tissues and pretend it’s allergies (in November? Really?). Because I’m never sure that I’ve made the right decision. Because breaking up is hard to do, after 5 long years of service. Because I just want a familiar face, a friend, a warm tight hug…but instead there are children screaming and crying, and it pierces my thin skin, and it grates my nerves, and it doesn’t stop.
I don’t like that at all, Friends.
But I do like drinking. And the liquor store is still open.
Some days you just have a mood, you know? Like anxiety, or restlessness…anger. Some days you have a black heart, and some days it’s grey, and some days you go to the grocery store and buy milk and toilet paper, everything white and clean.
I work every Saturday and complain almost as often about the fact that I only have three days off per month. Friends will comment covetously of my Tuesday and Thursday mornings spent baking, running errands, cleaning house, listening to music…and I’ll just as quickly ask them what it’s like to have TWO DAYS OFF IN A ROW EVERY SINGLE WEEK.
(Perry Says it’s like having a mini vacation. Huh.)
I hope I never forget this, this feeling. This moment when we are young, but we are finally women, living on our own, spending what seems to us a great deal of money as we please, and sometimes wisely. A time when we’ve grown into our bodies and our lives, we can walk home without bras and make bad decisions, when we cry so easily and drink too much and live on chips and dip.
And we get closer. We get closer.
I don’t ever want to forget walking home, nearly 2am, and knowing that I should have gone to bed earlier, knowing that I will be exhausted (again) in the morning. So tired I feel like I am already asleep, like I am swimming through the murky-warm waters of a late summer night, all grays and deep blues and the thick, silent air.
My feet sore; my heart happy.
~OR~
Please Let Me Remember Tomorrow That I Dropped Picked-Off Nail Polish Into a Water Glass and Not Just Re-Fill It and Start A-Drinking
Tonight my mom asked me why I’d decided to become a vegan.
Then she listened carefully to the answer. And later she seriously considered my suggestion that she eat more whole grains.
It was pretty bad-ass.
* * *
Yesterday I went to brunch at Vertical Diner with Nicole friend. We had both been pretty shit-faced in public the night before. She’d rambled on to an acquaintance at a bar, and I’d negotiated with a high school-aged Jamba Juice employee. Milestones.
I am not yet too old to be publicly intoxicated. I have not yet reached Patsy and Eddy status. But someday, when I do reach that point, I will be okay with it.
SO okay.
* * *
Anyways, the point is that Nicole and I have decided to regress to high school levels of debauchery. And I’m okay with that as well, Friends. I’m okay with staying out late and having sleepovers and making bad choices and giggling and hanging out with my friends as though they were my very life-blood.
No parents, no rules.
(Which at this age means not only that my folks aren’t around, but also that I, myself, am not a parent).
Except my mom IS around. And we drink two gin and tonics (each) on a Monday night. And shoot the shit.
Then I come home and blog.
* * *
You’re Welcome!
little sarah Big World 