My weekend by decades

Another silent weekend on the blog. Whoops. I've been busy doing things.

Friday night I went Dutch Kills for a few gimlets and to catch up with Lauren, who I haven't seen in a few weeks. I really like that bar, its nondescript facade belying the warm light and high spirits of what's inside. Also, I like the idea of Long Island City way more than the actual neighborhood. Or at least that is what I tell myself when I feel a pang of jealousy at the impossibility of my living there. I hearken back to the memories I have of LIC being a shitbox of a neighborhood and how easily I could have accessed it; I am adept at being too early for some things, too late for others and pretty much always tripping on one shoe lace or other.

I spent Saturday working my occasional library job, which also happens to be my favorite one and caught up and checked in and enjoyed the relative silence of a less dense population with fewer computers and accompanying issues and, amazingly, way more staff than where I usually am.

I spent the night at my parents' house and it was a strange series of events, none of which I'll elaborate in a public blog that has left me pondering whether or not everyone's parental relationships are as fraught with roller coaster conversations and layer cakes of history as mine seem to be. Or do most people just like, watch TV together and not talk at all? I only know for certain that I grow up a little more every time I come home from a weekend at the folks.

Sunday was a lovely, if chilly afternoon spent a a christening/birthday party for Marianne's sons. There was a ton of food and booze and babies and falling leaves and wood smoke in the air and it was a pleasant afternoon spent chatting and enjoying the 80s playlist that permeated the backyard.

That party really made me feel older than I am. Like I was in my 40s but only because I was drinking wine by a fire pit, talking about work and there were kids running around who belonged to people my age or younger and everyone was paired off or had been or wanted to be. It was a different feeling from the night before at my parent's house when I felt 18, still searching for an answer from someone who still sought the answers herself but not knowing it. Or the night before when I felt 27, when entering the warm light of a bar on a Friday night in autumn could augur stumbling home alone in a clumsy tumble of angst or stumbling to a strange home in a clumsy tumble of limbs. I guess I'm like Whitman: I am large, I contain multitudes. Except mine would be: I am old, I contain decades.

That's all I got. Whachu got?