The Nature of Nostalgia

"I'd rather sleep my whole life away than have someone keep me from dreaming." Lil Bro (and Lil Tobler!) and I are cracking up while we wait for "Santa". Really, we're just watching movies and being idle. I'm up in my room from home, with my knees drawn up against my chest and the laptop propped just so. The bookcase stares at me with high school and college yearbooks, photo albums, testmasters prep materials (f'in LSATs) and every volume of journalistic effort I've made since Age 10 of my life. (And yes, I keep them neatly lined up in chronological order. Beginning with the 'Babs Bunny' journal that requires a key to open...)

I realized the other day how anxiously I'd like to be at the start of something new - anything! It's not that I'm ready for anything in particular in my life to come to a culmination - my job, my school, my living situation, etc. Those things are all good, and that's fantastic. Except. I just want to be on the precipe of something. Anything. I want to stare into something with the giddy excitement of all the unknowns. A crush! A new city! A new store, even.

This room has my history tucked into and buried splashed all over the crevices. The bulletin board with the pictures of my high school boyfriend (now married), the list of colleges I applied to (now forgotten), the prom court sash (nope, still love that). It's just that - when do you get to really start over? Ever?

Oh fuck this navel-gazing.

Currently Listening: Sara Bareilles - Fairytale. (I'm really into music lately that uses the piano as it's primary instrument.)

Without Law School

Food tastes sweeter. My beers go down smoother. And my whole heart sings. SINGS.

Without law school, I went to the Smithsonian American Art museum this past weekend. I examined the Frank Gohlke exhibit on landscape photography (mildly disappointing save for his large series prints on the Surrey River [?] in Massachusetts), and exclaimed at an Ansel Adams/Georgia O'Keefe exhibit (amazing). Without law school, I walked up and down the holiday market vendors with their twinkling lights, sat and listened to the bluegrass band singing sweetly on their small stage propped against the museum stairs, and ignored the homeless guy by the heat lamp looking at the band with un-focused un-smothered disinterest.

After that, we went to the sushi place in Gallery Place – the one with the conveyor belt right next to Haagen-Daas that I didn't really think would be that great (I really didn't) – and ate THE MOST ROCKIN' EXCELLENT SUSHI EVER. And on Sunday, I went grocery shopping. I made pork chops and cookies and jambalaya in that fantastic slow cooker Mom got me for Thanksgiving (because it's in the spirit of Pilgrims to give food-related presents on Thanksgiving) and plugged in all the Christmas lights my roomie and I put up (eventhough I'm Buddhist).

Without law school, I went shopping for my New Year's Eve Dress, bought my bus tickets (because NYE is better in NYC), and watched an entire movie from start to finish, no wait – TWO movies! Holiday Inn (Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby) and Guys & Dolls (Marlon Brando, YOUNG Marlon Brando) and applauded old movies for being … what's the word? CLASSIC. Instead of a bookbag, I've been hauling a gymbag to the office and sneaking into GW's gym to stare myself through a series of cardio workouts. (Is it weird that until a week ago I had NEVER been to a gym before? Nay, was frightened of gyms?)

This weekend, I plan on checking out the Hemphill Fine Arts gallery near Logan Circle (I'm a sucker for photography exhibits), and Sticky Rice for their tater tots and sushi (whaaaat? It's like someone made a restaurant from my dreambox.) I'll see Lil Bro and new Lil Tobler (the cat he adopted without telling any of us), and we'll go shopping for gifts that will inevitably be terrible because I give horrible presents. I will wrap them all in the same wrapping paper I used as last year, and then get drunk at some ridiculously bourgeois venue with martinis and heels.

Through it all, I will not for one second – not for half a second – think about contracts or parole evidence or why, seriously why, do all of my law books use the female pronoun when talking about clients. (Seriously, this is something that is weird because it's weirding me out. "Your client could be confused about the law, SHE might come ask you to file a claim – what next?" Why is the client always a she? Is the old boys network making women into helpless farthings again? Or me being over-sensitive?) I will not bend underneath the crushing weight of hauling my backpack to the office or feel the painful anxious-ridden burn of leaving work by 5 to make it to class on time. I won't consider the daunting truth that I haven't had a date in nearly a year – haven't even been excited by the idea of a date in nearly a year – or face the twenty-something existential crisis, What the Hell Am I Doing With My Life, that's looming around the January 1 corner.

Instead I will enjoy the city for what it's gone to offer, and burn like a character in a Jack Kerouac book. Without law school.

I don't have time to respond to the NYMag's feature article right now, but I will. It's just begging to be controversial with it's headliner "Should Gender Equality Extend to Drinking?"

The answer is, of course, yes. Because, frankly, what shouldn't gender equality extend to? Seriously, is there something it shouldn't apply to? A loophole I didn't learn about in my [WORD REDACTED DUE TO BIG BROTHER SUPERVISION]college?

And secondly, because I'd kill to see an article about the drinking habits of my male counterparts. I mean, really. Women get scolded for mixing progressive feminism and martinis, while men are yet again pardoned for their excesses in the name of "boyhood". Ridiculous. Any twenty-something will tell you that belligerence is unattractive regardless of gender. Nothing kills a buzz faster than a friend who's been over-served.

So equalize that and get me a whiskey. Yes. Whiskey.

My Brain Feels Full

Currently Listening: Justin Nozuka - "Be Back Soon"