still no fries...

my birthday reminded me exactly how old i have become...

and how very very little i miss *going out*...

the getting home at 3 am part was brutal...but i'd have to say the drinking coffee at 10:30 pm in a bar full of drunken bright eyed youth was absolutely humbling...

coffee!?!...at a show?...in a bar?...are you kidding me?!?...what's next?...the early dinners because it's time to take my pill?...

man, and i remember that bar...i have on several occasions closed down that bar...10:30 pm was the beginning of most evenings!...

anyway, let's start at the beginning of last evening...

i met the lord of the ring in the city and we went to a lovely little restaurant and had a wonderful little meal...

then we proceeded to a divey bar in search of some hot and salty fries and had a pitcher of really cheap beer...no luck on the fries, but we basked in the glory that is pabst blue ribbon and even ran into an old party friend from a decade ago...very interesting...

then we went to the bar where the show was and just hung out...thankfully they had fries, so we ordered some and in the meantime drank some jaggermeister shots and beer and people watched...very very interesting...

but by the time we got the long awaited fries, they had been sitting for a good half an hour...they were cold, slightly damp, and sadly limp...damn, i knew i shouldn't have trusted a man wearing a tight pink t-shirt to deliver the goods...

and that combined with the patrons in the bar really confirmed that my absence from the *scene* has yielded very little if any change... 

as the evening turned to night and wore on we were incredibly tired and half wished we were anywhere but there...what happened to us?...we were like old folks...after awhile even my push-up bra wanted to call it a night...thank god it perservered...

then, steve arrived...

man is he short...i mean i knew he was short, but that dude was seriously small!...and, um, wearing an oversized blazer...

however, regardless of this new information, i did what any really truly red blooded silly mortal mama with a seven year crush, wearing a push up bra and operating on too little sleep and too much coffee and beer would do (or not), and i forwent the excited whispering and discreet pointing and i went up to him and introduced myself...

we shook hands, had a bit of a chat, all the while i'm thinking i am so much taller than him...my hands are bigger...this is really sad...

because long time fascination or no, i simply cannot have romantic (or otherwise) feelings about any man who is shorter than me, or has smaller hands...i can't...i'm far too shallow...

so i get back to the table and the lord of the ring says

"so the spell is broken, huh?"

"um, yeah...what gave it away?"

so we drank a little more and waited for the show...

then, steve comes right up to me and says

"you wanted an autograph or something, right?"

um, no, i thought, but steve's offering himself up so might as well take it!

so i say

"um, yeah...could you do my kid's next party?"

he did not look amused...

obviously my push up bra had indeed quit for the evening...

"just kidding...here sign this"

and i hand him a guinness beer coaster that just that afternoon had been given to the lord of the ring by a co-worker who had just returned from ireland...

good thing too because i was feeling just snarky enough to have him sign something else...just to see what he would do!...

so he signs it and that was that...i am now in possession of  a coaster advertising beer signed by a very influential and important figure from my children's childhood...from a show they don't know we went to...

yeah, what exactly do i do with that?...

then the show started...in which there was steve and another guy, mostly live but some pre-recorded music, *amusing* slide show graphics, some sort of action figure being waved around, and of course the blazer...

sigh...

and to top it all off, the sound at that venue was really really bad...and i was too friggin' old and not nearly drunk enough to not care...

we left right before it ended and after walking a mile, waiting for the ferry for 45 minutes, riding the ferry for 35 minutes, driving 30 minutes to pick up our sleeping kids, then driving 30 more minutes home, we were done...and i still never got those hot and salty fries... 

and so another birthday comes to a close...

it was good to get out...remind myself that i am not the sum of my parts...that the parts that make me up are just a *part* of who i am...there is always room to step outside of my comfort level and do what i normally *wouldn't do*...and that's good to know...it can possibly be a let down and be tiring, but good to know nonetheless...

because all i really want to know, despite the inevitable aging, is that i am moving forward...that the experiences i had so long ago have played their own important part in bringing me to who i am today...and because of that, i am presently capable of stepping outside of who i am and what i do on a *daily mom* basis...that i am capable of re-birth, however small, and even if it's just for a few fleeting hours...

so good-bye 32 and hello to the brand spankin' new year that is 33!...

they say jesus died when he was in his 33rd year...i'm not looking for anything so dramatic to seal my *place* in this world...at 33 i'm simply hoping for a bit of resurrection every once in awhile...

x.