The Downfalls of Getting Older

I hope that I am aging gracefully.

I am pretty good about my sleep, diet (even with the binging I eat TONS of fruits and veggies), exercise and skin routine.  I have started to get gray hairs (a few here and there) and even that I can handle.

What I cannot handle are my hangovers.

I am not a big drinker.  Yes, I used to be a HUGE drinker.  If I drank the amount I once did, I am sure I would have to be rushed to the ER to get my stomach pumped.  I say this honestly, because once after too many shots of Captain Morgan when I was sixteen....this actually did happen.

The other night, Crush and I went out to supper with some of his old friends.  We had a wonderful time enjoying some delicious and very overpriced Thai food in Charleston.  This is a place that Chicago has Charleston beat....yummy and inexpensive Thai food.  I get that it is supply and demand and Thai food is super popular here. The $20.00 pad woon sen was yummy nonetheless and I promised Crush even yummier Thai for a fraction of the price the next time we make it to the Windy City.  He is excited, no one loves a deal more than my man.

Anyway, I had four drinks in a matter of six hours.  1 glass of wine, 2 glasses of champagne, and 1 vodka and soda water and I got DRUNK.  Like, not sloppy, but definitely not cute.   I was in a jolly mood.  I did a really seductive sloppy strip tease for my man, rapped him a few 90's favorites including Candy Man (Knockin Boots) and then fell on my bed in a heap while the room spun.  Hot.  For the big finish, I started yelling "ATTACK!" and made a police siren noise, every time Crush tried to initiate physical contact with me.

I know know.  I mixed drinks, so that was half the problem.

I woke up with a major hungover. URGH!  I made it through a half ass workout and then I demanded that Crush get me pizza.  It wasn't pretty.

Today, I am back on track after about fifteen hours of sleep yesterday.  The reality is that things I could once do: drink ALL night, sleep three hours, work nine hours and then make it to the gym are WAY behind me.

It makes me sad, but I would rather be sleeping by 10:00 pm any night of the week.  Now, I am catching up on all the things I needed to do yesterday before I allow myself get into bed early tonight.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and handled their booze better than I did.

Girls Girls Girls

Do you all LOVE Girls on HBO as much as I do?

I know people are ALL over the map on this one and I can see why.

Unlike the ladies of Sex and the City, does anyone REALLY want to see themselves so much in these characters.....because it sometimes it isn't pretty.

I see myself a lot in the main character of the show Hannah, especially when I was in my 20's.  Hannah is unselfishly selfish.  A total know it all who knows nothing.  Insecurely secure.  A smart idiot.  She is literally a walking contradiction.  She doesn't know it though and neither did I when I was her age.

When I was younger, like Hannah, I thought I knew more than I did and I couldn't stop talking about all of my grand ideas, but I had NO idea how to get them going.  I would get drunk and dream, but I couldn't turn plans into actions.  I was dramatic, sad, happy, crazy, and then serene.  I was so many feelings so many days and I am glad that my body knows how to feel all of these things.  That is what growing up is all about.

My Crush, he isn't as emotional as me publicly, but he is a man that cries and I love it.  The first night we met my parents for supper my mom told him that I "had worked so hard on myself making myself into this real live person.  A person who could feel, help, show compassion, who wasn't ruled by only my mind, but by my heart, too." It was a super sweet sentiment.  Crush cried.  In front of my parents.  It was just one of those life moments that means something, that gets frozen in time, that you think about many years later and you can actually recall exactly how you felt.

Crush wasn't raised to feel.  Unlike Hannah and me, he had to stay stoic and strong.  As a child, he was taught to be seen and not heard.

In his 20's, he didn't go out and get drunk and sloppy and fall down and vomit and cry and order pizza and have to make calls to his friends the next day and apologize for what he did.  He didn't come home late and eat his roommate's snacks and try to order late night Thai and then didn't hear the doorbell when the crab rangoon came because he was passed out on the comfy couch 5 feet away from the door.  He didn't go out to dinner with his best friends and cry because he would never have what they had and beg them to please understand how being single (and selfish) in a big city is so hard.

Because it is.  But, life is hard and finding love is just one part of the big puzzle.

Sometimes I admire Crush for living this clean life.  This good life.  This simple life.  I make things VERY hard for myself.  I color outside of the lines.  I say comments that end long friendships in the matter of seconds.  I feel big, I love hard, and I fall from grace all too often.

But, like Hannah, this is who I am.  A mess of a person who just got her shit pieced together in her 30's NOT her 20's.  The race won't be won and the lesson won't be done being learned until the day I take my last breath.  I will always be a work in progress.  I will always strive to be better.

I am glad I was a silly girl in my 20's.  I smile when I think about how naive I was, how important my life seemed then, how nervous I was that I would never get......or deserve, what I wanted.

I can admit, with Crush, there has come peace.  Peace that it will all by okay.  That all the late nights led me here.......the knowledge that things do happen for a reason.  You will never know the day your life will change, much like how mine did one morning last summer when I received my first email from my current boyfriend.

Be a mess.  Be a girl.  Never apologize to yourself (but do apologize to the friends you insulted the night before 3 dirty martinis in) for it.

(Also.....one of the best characters of Girls, Shoshana, looks so much my like my former assistant who is also a total frienemy of mine.  It is almost scary.  I tune in just to see the similarities and then shutter to myself while I eat popcorn.)