Young Again
Last Friday night the big event was just the two of us playing Up Words (Scrabble on crack) in front of the fire. That was following an afternoon spent finally finishing up the hat I gave to Simon for Christmas in the form of two balls of yarn, two size 10 needles, and a promise. Knitting! Board games! Such excitement! Careful not to overextend yourselves! You might pull a muscle, or worse, break a hip! At exactly 5:30 p.m. we pulled down the shades, wrapped our hairdos in tissue paper, and went to bed, but not before we removed our dentures and placed them in a single glass of Efferdent, spooning like lovers, to remind us of how we once were, in younger days.
What?! Sometimes I forget I'm still only (only!) twenty-eight. Board games and bedtimes, love them though I do, can certainly hold out another few years (or decades) while I actually do something with this....this "youth," yes?
Last weekend we filled our hours with more age-appropriate activities, one of which was dinner partying with Moose. (To make up for the soggy-in-the-middle cherry-pie-from-scratch she brought us many months ago, we showed up with gooey-in-the-middle brownies-from-a-box. Classy!) But then, as if dinner in SF weren't already enough excitement to get my granny panties all twisted round, the inimitable Miss Holly Burns had the foresight to go and get born twenty-eight years ago that very same night, and so we met her and Jemima and my hair twin, May, and all their men-folk, for drinks and, surprisingly, choreographed dancing in a bar. Simon says if you watch that video closely you can detect a dozen shades of whiteness in our style.
On the drive home after drinks and a delicious ginger-pork stirfry dinner, I looked at the clock and declared our half-past-midnight departure time "perfectly respectable." Simon asked me to clarify: was it respectable that we managed to stay upright and awake so far past our fogey bedtime, or respectable that we managed to exit a party so early, before the hosts had to pry us off of their furniture and shove us out the door while we were still in the middle of one of our famous party stories (that somehow always have me talking about the Mormons). Happily, I meant our departure was respectably early, as we're usually the last ones to leave a party, and that sometimes includes the hosts, whom we discover sleeping upon our coats when we go into the bedroom to retrieve them (the coats, that is) at the end of the night. Given the opportunity, Simon and I can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, is what I'm saying, and we're never ones to pass up an opportunity to practice that proclivity when there's a good possibility we will be talked back to (in more than meows and cat-chatters) so we always end up being those people, for better or for worse. Consider this fair warning: If you have plans to share our company sometime in the future, nap first.
Although we certainly indulge in a senior lifestyle with regularity (see: Sunday morning, tea and poached eggs, charting this year's planting cycle for the vegetable garden, watering the houseplants, lively conversation about flatware), I suppose the bigger picture is a little less pathetic. Two Saturdays ago, for instance, we were out at a bar listening to live music until well past 2 a.m. Granted, we had to stay that late for Simon to collect his pay for playing the opening act, and I almost fell asleep waiting for him while standing at the curb supposedly protecting his equipment, but even that says something: my boyfriend is in a band = we are young and hip.
Speaking of which, I haven't said much about the band lately, but they're still practicing every week and playing regularly all over the Bay Area--so regularly that I (a) no longer feel compelled to attend every single show and (b) have become borderline blasé about the fact that my boyfriend is in a band. Which is sad, really, because, gosh, what's cooler than having a boyfriend in a band? I think it might even be cooler than if I were in a band myself! At the last show a few of my coworkers were in the audience and made a bit of a fuss over the utter coolness of it all--"That's your boyfriend! In a band! On stage! You are so cool!"--and I was happy to admit, and happy for the reminder, that yeah, it is pretty neat nifty rad bitchin'. I especially like it when he winks at me during a song; it makes me feel young again.
I LOVE those people, also glad that you two qualify for said title.
Sigh, to have a band member wink at you... EEEK. Yep, that'd make me feel young again. What am I talking about? Dude, we ARE young!
Boy, this post makes me feel old, even though I'm younger than you in actual years, because wow, apparently exhibit nothing except old-people behaviors. I'm sure the adult diapers are just around the corner.
John and I can totally be those "go to bed at a resonable hour" people or those "party like a rock star" people. And we're younger! Sometimes it's just nice to do the stay-at-home thing, though, isn't it?
As for the band, when and where is he playing? Ever on the penninsula? Down in the Palo Alto area? Dude! Excuses to go out! Please inform! I promise not to drool too much over your man. :)
They haven't ever played the peninsula, and because of my stupid pseudo anonymity thing, I don't feel comfortable advertising the shows here, which is a shame because the band, they kick ass.
Nothing wrong with board games and such. We play dominoes all the time. Talk about an old people game. No one wants to play Trivial Pursuit with me anymore though. *Pouts* But I'm all about the games.
If no one wants to play with you, that probably means you always win! Yay!
Our standby is cribbage, which just smells like denture cream, doesn't it? ;)
OK, why you were out painting the town red, I was actually being the granny in my new house in SSF, BUILDING FURNITURE IN MY PAJAMAS. Then, I retired at 10:30pm. Now that is just plain sad, my first weekend in San Francisco and I'm just a quarter of a century old so no excuses there. Ah well, I suppose there will be more...and I just tell myself this is my relaxation period after two years of going out in NYC and never coming in before 4.
It's not senior behavior, it's RETRO. It's HIP. We're bringing back Yesteryear--TODAY!
I just love you guys. You are every sort of wonderful.
Bless Simon for implying you need to watch the video CLOSELY to observe our color spectrum. But I suspect our shades of eggshell to ecru might be glaringly obvious.
My boyfriend is in a band too. Isn't it fun to watch all the other chippies drool over your fella and know that you get to go home with him after the show?
Sigh. I used to date the boys in the band when I was in HS/College, and I dated a couple more after my divorce. Sadly, they were not forever material (but not because they are in bands). I did marry a fella who used to play in a band...a marching band, so it's not really the same vibe.
Hair twin! Hair twin! I think that's rather like being a power twin. Unite!
Do you know after I met you I was trying to find your blog everywhere but no amount of googling "boy girl blog" "girl and a boy and a blog" "blogging girl and boy oh boy oh boy" brought me to you!
Thank goodness La Burns linked to you.
And don't worry. Ever since I bought an apartment I have to warn all my visiting friends from Manhattan who knew me in my younger, cooler years that I've "gone yuppy" on them. I don't vote yuppy or anything, but the other day I had a secret craving for some penny loafers. So sensible!
Going yuppy is worse than growing old.
I used to date the boys in the band. Sigh. Those were the days. My husband was in a band...the marching kind. Not really the same vibe.
Sorry for the double; didn't think the first one posted. [crawls under rock]
A lot of my guy friends in high school were in the marching band, and I thought that was the coolest. Then again, I was a bit of a dork, so it figures.
Just like youth is wasted on the young, I think knowing who you are and being secure in that feeling is wasted on the old. Because now that I'm OK with being a dork, I'm too tired to go out and show it.
Well, we are now confirmed to be the lamest of the lame and oldest of the old, since our weekends SOLELY consist of Scrabble/cooking/homey sorts of things.
There is no 2am for us, unless it's getting up to pee in the middle of the night, with our withered old bladders.
We are hitting 40…hard, but Mel is in a band and I do love that. We just had our little bundle of screaming joy and figured all cool activity was over but three months in saw that Shepard Fairey was having a show in town (London – cool warehouse on Brick Lane - 2 hours drive). We headed down, stuck the kid in the “baby back pack”, and cruised round the show, ending up with people taking more pictures of us than Shepard. He signed something for her so she now has her first signed something. Getting older, having kids, work pressure are no reason to stop doing interesting things. They just give you more money to spend, make you choosier, and, admittedly, get you home earlier.
i love this post. i sometimes think i am the oldest 29 year old in the world, but that just makes the days when i don't feel like that seem like huge victories. ;)
Mph, knitting and scrabble sound heavenly, but then I am a hundred and thirty million years old, and before that night I hadn't been out since Christmas. Plus, I have no freaking idea why I went all Little-Cousin-Honeysuckle-On-The-Vine that night. Can I blame the bourbon?