Yuck.

I hate being sick.

That's all.

Sunrise

This morning I got up super early. 6am on a Saturday is no joke. But my plan for today is to drive down to Poughkeepsie, take the train to the city (metro north, $25 round trip, yes please!) and visit two of my lovely friends, S and K. So I dragged myself out of bed and I'm all ready to go, just finishing my coffee. I looked out the window just now and saw the sunrise! It's just peeking over the rooftops and coming through the trees. So beautiful. It has a kind of hazy, glowing quality that makes me want to keep looking at it even though I'm already seeing spots. It made getting up early worth it.

On another note, I'm so excited to go to the city! First of all the drive to Poughkeepsie is very pretty. Then I get to spend a few hours on the train, either writing or reading Romeo and Juliet, oooor watching Sex and the City. Hmm, tough choices. And last but not least, I get to see two of the girls that I spent last year living with. Pretty much the best weekend ever, especially as K and I are planning a spa day! It might turn into a fail because we have yet to actually book anything, but walk ins will be welcome, right?

Anyway, time for me to hit the road. I've got coffee, music, gas, and great weather. I cant find my sunglasses, but I guess that means I'll just have to buy some in the city!

Surprise!

Just a quick post before i run off to work to say - SPRING IS HERE! I am so excited about this. Yesterday after work my dear friend H and I went for a walk! Got dinner at an excellent Mexican place, and then WALKED again from my house to hers, watched a sweet movie, and had a generally perfect night. I love spring. Almost as much as I love summer. I don't know how I'm going to keep going to work and sitting inside all day. I might have to quit my job. (Just kidding...probably.) Maybe I'll win the lottery so I can just relax and enjoy my life in the warmth until the fall. It's going to be 65 on Friday. It will be 67 in St. Louis, but why I know that is a whole different story. More later!

Excuse me, Time? Where do you think you're going?

The theme of this weekend, which I'm just realizing now, is TIME. On Saturday I drove from Albany to Plattsburgh (and back, ew) to attend my cousin Trisha's bridal shower. What does this have to do with time? Well, six hours in the car with two ipod enabled teenagers is a really, really long time. But that's not all.

My cousin Trish is younger than I am. I'm twenty-two, she's twenty. She has three sisters, Julia (24 I think), Terra (22) and Kelly (17). Julia is also engaged, Terra is married and has the most beautiful baby girl (Hailee) in the world, and Kelly has a sweet boyfriend. This got me thinking. I am 22...should I be engaged? Married? No...right? Then I started thinking, who else do I know that is married?

An old friend from my cheerleading days is married and living in Key West. A once-best-friend is married and has a six month old baby boy. A friend from elementary school is engaged. But then again, the vast majority of my friends are still single, dating, etc. Most people are in that in-between stage. We've finished undergrad, now grad/law/med school is the next thing on the agenda. And after that, we'll see. But I don't feel like an anomaly at least. At first it was hard to get used to people my age settling down and actually procreating. After all, I knew these girls when they were in elementary, middle, and high school. Swallowing bees by accident. Streaking. Cutting up frogs. That kind of thing. So for them to be moving to a stage in life that is so far away from where I am was hard to wrap my head around at first.

But then, if they are happy, then I am happy for them. Not everyone matures at the same rate, or even in the same ways, or wants the same things from life. But time marches steadily on, and we figure things out. We've got years and years to grow and think and plan and laugh. And love.

Romeo and Juliet

I will admit it. When we read Romeo and Juliet in middle school or high school or whenever it was we read it...I skimmed. Partially it was because at 16 I was so over poetry/anything rhyming. Partly it was because I had recently discovered that I didn't need to read the books, I just needed to argue with EVERYTHING the teacher said and she would take that as a sign that I was thinking outside the box. Thanks Mrs. Bentley! She made me read aloud from Beowulf once, I think, and that's when my grudge against her (slash against reading for her class) solidified. And I had her for two years in a row. A lot of literature got skimmed.

Thankfully last week I picked up a book by Robin Maxwell called 'O, Juliet', which is a retelling of Shakespeare's classic, set in Florence in the time of the Medici. After devouring her book, I got on Netflix and watched Baz Luhrmann's 1996 (OMG SO LONG AGO) version of Romeo + Juliet. Oh, Leo. Oh, Clare. I'm pretty sure we watched this movie in the aforementioned English class, after we read the play. But this was the first time I'd seen it since, and it was absolutely beautiful. Eight years later I can truly appreciate the movie. Leo and Clare seem so incredibly young - a fact that didn't come through the first time, since I was just as young, if not younger. But this time I see the sweet innocence in Leo's smile, the wonder in Clare Danes' big, green eyes. It made all the difference to me.

So now I appreciate Romeo and Juliet. Their plight, their love, their story. R+J now rank up their with my other favorite couple, Tristan and Isolde. Star-crossed lovers who sacrifice everything for each other. Love at first sight. Knowing that the one thing you want is the one thing you cant have. The feeling you get when your heart belongs not to you but to another, and how delicate and fragile it makes you feel, especially when you know you carry their heart inside your own body. Unrequited love.

The only question I have is this: Romeo, Romeo...wherefore art thou, Romeo?

Car Talk

I don't know why, but my best friends from high school and I always do our serious talking in the car. My friend E and I used to sit in the car outside her house and talk for hours. Maybe it was because as 16 year olds we couldn't really be guaranteed privacy in her house or in mine? There were always siblings or parents who wanted to 'just ask one thing', or 'just see what you girls are up to'.

To escape this, we would go out for a meal or grab hot chocolate (before my induction into the coffee-loving world). We would chat, and it always seemed like the really important discussions would start up just as we got in the car to go home. We talked about boys, of course. School, our plans for college, friends, family, religion, race, the future, our dreams...every topic under the sun would be discussed in my born-the-same-year-as-I-was red Volvo sedan with leather seats and working sunroof. (My first car, I still miss it.)

Five years later, even though I no longer live with my parents, my friend H and I found ourselves in this exact same position last night. Different car, hers this time. We had decided to go to dinner on a whim, found a cute, tiny restaurant in Albany where the only other patrons were a couple in their mid-twenties, a pair of ten year old boys who were pretty much cuter than words, playing grown ups in this classy little place, and seven or eight cops...off duty perhaps? Maybe not? Who knows.

After dinner, we drove the .9 miles back to my apartment. And then spent an hour and a half sitting in H's car, listening to an sex-themed hip-hop/r&b Wednesday-night college radio show. (Check out Cypress Hill feat. Pitbull & Marc Anthony - Armada Latina.) And we just talked. About boys, of course. School, our plans for grad/law school, friends, family, religion, race, the future, our dreams...

So maybe the car is the best place for deep conversations. Or maybe its just that once you really get on a role, it doesn't matter where you are. But car talk with my dearest friends is something I always look forward to.