It’s funny how all of my married friends make me feel awfully old… but when I hang out with the friends with babies, I feel incredibly young.
Or maybe it’s just because I was hanging out with Rachel at her parents’ house, which is where I spent the majority of my adolescence (especially after curfew, because I could see the light in my parent’s room from her back porch).
Or maybe it’s because I spent most of the night singing in my patented chipmunk voices to little Miss Kylie Rose:
I hang with babies because they make me look tan:
However, if you’re hanging out with babies, don’t wear stretchy necklaces with big colorful beads. You’ll get whapped in the face, and then all you’ll feel is pain:
Babies are very good at snapping people back into reality.
I’m house-sitting again, so I get to practice the piano. I’ve been missing that a lot. I don’t like practicing when my dad is home, because unless I’m playing the Beatles or the Stones, he thinks he’s Lester Bangs. He especially hates it when I’m teaching myself random melodies, and he gets really confused when I’m plucking out my favorite eighties jams because he’s never heard of any of them.
Dad: What’s that one?
Me: ‘Rosanna’ by Toto. I’m going to play it for Tony.
Dad: Tonto?
Me: TOTO.
Dad: Can’t you look up the notes and THEN play it?
Me: I AM playing it. It only took a few tries; it’s not that hard.
Dad: Huh. That’s what it sounds like, then?
Me: (Plinkity-plinkplink) Yeah.
Dad: And it was a big song?
Me: (plinkplink, shrug) I guess.
Dad: Boooooo!!! Play some Skynard.
Yesterday I taught myself “The Promise” by When in Rome (the song that plays at the end of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’), and it was fun. I have tons of baby pictures of my brother and I “playing” that piano, which belonged to my Grandpa. So maybe that’s why I feel young. I don’t know.
Or maybe it’s because on the way to the party last night, I saw some kid at QT holding up a piece of cardboard that said “44 West to Schwaggstock”, and it brought back tons of memories of the other (now pregnant) Ra. Hitchhiking to the Schwagg. Ah, youth.
So I wasn’t gonna go to the party, but then Nick got off work and called me back, and I haven’t seen Nick in forever. There weren’t really 90 couples, that was just me being a drama queen (I’ll pause for the shock to sink in). It was just a few nice people who all left their significant others at home so it wasn’t so bad. Katie and Joe were the lone couple of the night, as well as King and Queen of Planet Awesome because they rock (and because it was their party, and plus that whole getting married thing).
Heebs was there and I got the usual cold shoulder, but when I told everyone that Vee sent me a text about Hasslehoff crying on American Idol, he laughed and practically talked to me. So that’s something.
And later, Nick let me sneak upstairs to their apartment so that I could kiss Miss Matilda on the forehead. I miss Miss Matilda.
The weird thing is (and I’m backing up here), when I was at my parent’s house, I didn’t go in my room at all, even though I went in the basement. I loved that room so much and I always felt so safe and happy there. But I don’t have much in common with the girl who lived there, and I had no desire to revisit that time at all. Sometimes it feels like my old room, and sometimes it’s just a room and nothing more. But this was the first time that I consciously didn’t want to go there. So that made me feel old.
My grandma says she feels 22. I suppose it’s all relative. But it’s nice to know that one way or the other, those feelings always balance themselves out.
P.S. Oh! I forgot to tell you! Hanging out with my sister-in-law the other day was actually really fun!
Secretly Stephie 