What was supposed to be a grand, long night of shenanigans ended as a leisurely dinner eating cheesy cauliflower. We were home by eight and I fell asleep by ten, watching Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha have a much wilder night than I.
Last year I wrote a post called “31 Feels Like Getting Really Excited About Trying Out A New Broom.” Upon moving into our new house, I found myself getting really excited about using a new plunger and figure the same applies to 32.
When I was young, my parents used to warn me that time flies infinitely faster when you get older. I thought this was weird and didn’t believe them. If there’s anything I do know with every fiber of my being, it’s that time does pass by faster when you’re older. It just does.
As I get older, I feel more nostalgic. I think we’re always passing from one 1/8, 1/4, mid, 3/4-life crisis to the next. We forget things and then we remember them many years later. People we love die, our bodies start doing strange things like cracking and aching where they used to be fine, and trendy things we coveted in grade school make that full circle back into style.
Sometimes these crises feel like complete, bone-crushing moments of “WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE” panic. Other times, they feel less like crises and more like chapters opening and closing. Sometimes they transition like segues.
Jake and I have often compared our young adult experiences. He went to the University of Minnesota and I attended a small liberal arts college in rural Iowa. His experience might reflect what one might typically imagine of attending parties, staying up late, and dating, while I played it really safe.
I went to Joe’s Nighthawk, that bar on the edge of campus where the cool kids went to party, exactly once. I mostly went because someone said they had good chicken wings. And my dating life was actually based on that one scene in Mean Girls where the popular athlete cheats on Lindsay Lohan at a Halloween party with a girl dressed up like a Playboy bunny. Yup, just like the movie. My friends and I played candy poker and watched a lot of Scrubs. One night my friend dressed up in a giant, pink bunny costume and hopped around campus with a box of Trix which she sprinkled in someone’s car. I considered that a pretty wild night.
At my friend’s recent baby shower, we sat around and reminisced. I brought up how I always thought it would be fun to get together and pack the experiences that I missed into one evening. For blogging purposes, of course. We made tentative plans to stay up late, visiting nightclubs, and bars, and restaurants.
We called it “Night of Debauchery.” It had to have a very dramatic name.
Friday evening arrived. The temperature was sub-zero. I arrived prepared with an apologetic speech about how I was honored that everyone gathered for my big night of escapades, but really just wanted to hang out and eat stuff. My greeting was met with the news that one person had a job interview the next morning. The other couple was expecting and so we all had an out.
The wildest thing that we did was eat a lot of cheesy, roasted cauliflower and do bone marrow luges.
To be completely honest, I didn’t actually partake in a bone marrow luge, but I ate some bone marrow and Instagrammed my friend doing the luge! That counts by proximity, right? Ok, maybe not.
If you order bone marrow at The Libertine in Uptown, Minneapolis, your server will offer to pour a shot of whiskey down the bone into your mouth when you’re finished eating the marrow. Ours kindly extended the offer to everyone at our table.
So, I guess I’m as wild as I’ve always been. Maybe the best part of getting older is being OK with this. With being OK with myself at whatever chapter of life I’m passing through.
You are perfect! I love this post and miss you so much! This post just reaffirmed that. I think our college days were very similar. I went to the local college bar hangout exactly twice in 4 years and didn’t have an alcoholic drink. Lame. Just wasn’t my gig. I did have some late nights but that was due to working on the college newspaper and having to do the typesetting on Sundays in the middle of the night and early morning hours. Ugh. The bone marrow has me so intrigued now. I need to find someplace that serves it.
The Real Person!
It tastes so delicious! Like a savory meat butter. We would have gotten along well in college:)