Myself Unbound

Summertime makes me wild. 

The days are so long, there's so much more time available to me now. The heat is oppressive, it pushes me out of the confines of my home & into a place that's untamed & lush. With sweat shining on my bare shoulders and legs, I'm greedy for experience, thirsting for a drop or two of adventure. I join my pack, running wild with bare feet and acting like I was never domesticated in the first place. 

I want to feel everything, do everything, make every mistake, say every ridiculous thing that comes to mind, drink every drop, set every fire, be everything, run every mile, bask in every ray of sunshine, say yes every time, choose experience over sleep every night, feel everything, do everything. 

For three months, I want to experience myself unbound. Self-restraint seems impossible; I am feral. Be careful, don't get too close, don't make any sudden moves; I bite. 

And then suddenly, the heat will be replaced by a comforting chill in the air. The days will shorten. The sunshine will cease its unrelenting pursuit. I am still running, but I am slowing down. I am still wild. but soon I will be caught. Closer & closer, I can feel it coming up behind me, order is returning. Summertime will come to an end. My thirst will be curbed, and I will be satisifed with routine and the quiet comfort of domesticity. Bare skin will be covered and replaced by thick and cozy armor. Soon, very soon, my lupine soul will be lulled back into hiberation. Soon. 

Autumn's closing in.  

Lights Out!

A few weekends ago, Boo & I took a little trip out to a place called Herron Island where our bestie, Abra, had rented a house, and, another bestie, Laetitia was visiting from Prague.  Herron Island is pretty remote. No stores, no bars, no nothing on the island except for lovely homes & beautiful water views.  Ahhh.

The weekend we were there, the beautiful views were marred by a little bit of rain.  Okay, a lot of rain.  No big deal!  When you've got good friends, a box of wine, and Team Umizoomi on Amazon Prime, you're in good shape.  We spent the day working, reading, playing blocks, cooking, watching bad TV & crappy movies.  (Well, only if you qualify "Dude, Where's My Car" as crappy which I most definitely do not.)  We watched as the rain grew progressively harder, and we cheered as some rare lightening lit up the Pacific Northwest sky.  All in all, it was the kind of relaxing awesomeness you can only achieve on an island with no nothing.

And then it happened.

One of those rare bolts of lightening lit up the sky, and our little island house turned dark & silent.  Yes, the power had gone out.  Shit.

We had just settled in!  We had just queued up Umi on the laptop for Boo.  We had just started a "Project Runway" marathon.  We had just laid out our dinner plans which most definitely required electricity.  And - OH MY GOD - our mobiles weren't working and neither was the WiFi!  This was a true emergency.

After the realization that we could not check Facebook for an unknown amount of time had fully sunk in, we knew what we had to do.  We all took a different floor of the house to search for candles & flashlights.  We pulled out all of Boo's toys & books to keep him entertained.  We lit candles & placed them strategically around the house.  We corked(?) the box of wine.  And for three hours, we talked to each other.  We played pillows with Boo.  We watched the rain.  We weren't distracted by a text or a tweet.  We didn't pause midway through a conversation to check our email.  We didn't sit in silence for a straight 42 minutes while Tim Gunn & Heidi Klum ran commentary.  We enjoyed both the silence & the dark.

But, three hours later, when the electricity popped back on, we all cheered.  We celebrated that we could once again catalog our every move on social.  We rejoined the "Project Runway" marathon, and we all checked our phones.  Boo watched one more episode of Umi before bed.  But it felt a little like the end of something.

The lit candles were the one indication that the power had ever been off.  And, as we drank our boxed wine and watched the flickering of the flames, we made a decision.  The power would go out again the next day too - whether it wanted to or not.

And so, on our last night on the island, we enjoyed a self-imposed 2-hour blackout.  No phones, no WiFi, no TV, no laptops, no lights - just 3 good girlfriends (and a little Boo too), a box of wine, and a cutthroat game of Monopoly.

Sometimes you can just see everything so much better in the dark.

One Time At A Party...

Introducing a new weekly feature on Baby In A Bar, it's....

One Time At A Party....

Yes, folks, each week I will regale you with a hilarious, weird, heart-warming, wild, or just plain sloppy story that occurred - you guessed it - one time at a party!  Some names may be changed to protect the guilty.  (But you'll probably know who they are anyway.)  And, by all means, if you've got a great memory of us one time at a party, email me about it!  Some of those party scenes are a bit, ahem, blurry.

Let's start with an oldie, but an oh-so-goodie, shall we?  I believe the statute of limitations has run out on this one, so I'm naming names.

It was our Freshman year of college.  Katie & Christine went to UM in Ann Arbor, I was at Albion, and Rene was at UM Dearborn.  Although we'd only been away from each other for a few weeks, after that Summer of '94, it felt kind of like the umbilical cord had been cut.  The girls picked me up, and we headed west to Kalamazoo to hit up a party at Katie's ex's house at Western.

We were 18 years old, and there was beer.  In kegs.  Unlimited beer in kegs.  One time at a party, we were 4 best friends, and we were 18 years old, and there was beer in kegs.

After enjoying a bit of that keg beer, Katie went looking for her ex, James.* Where was James?  No one knew.  Obviously, she employed me to help her look for him.  We ended up outside, and still, he was nowhere to be found.

"I know where he is," says Katie with a wild look in her eye.  "He's in his room, hooking up with another girl!"

She sounds almost triumphant about it.

"C'mon!" she yells.  She leads me to the garage over which James' bedroom is conveniently located.  She hops up on the stairs, then the banister, and she stomachs her way onto the roof of the garage, ready to catch him mid-hook-up.

I am waiting safely on the ground, red Solo cup in hand.

She's completely on the roof now, and she stomps her way over the window.  She peers in, ready to...ready to....

"Oh", she says, turning around.  "He's not in there. Hmm."

Nope, he wasn't in there.  However, Katie is still, in fact, on the roof.  She walks to the edge, gets back down on her stomach and shimmies to the end trying to reach the banister with her foot.  It doesn't reach.

"It's okay!" I yell.  "Don't worry!  Just jump!  I'm going to catch you!  Don't worry!"

I don't even put my red Solo cup down.  Possibly, it's time to worry.

I stand on the stairs, reaching out, (beer in hand), waiting for Katie to fall gracefully backwards into my arms.  Yes, Gentle Reader, Katie did fall.  But not into my arms.  She fell on the banister.  Then she fell on to the top stair.  Then she fell down each stair individually.  Then she fell on to the ground.

I look down at her from the top stair where I stand and say, "You missed."

One time at a party, my best friend, Katie, missed.

*Yes, I've changed his name.  I don't know why.  It seems like the thing to do.  I'm calling him James cause he was the first person to introduce me to the band James.  I still really like them too.

The Summer of 1994

June of '94.  We had finally graduated from high school, and we spent all of our time together, in one combination or another.  Days were whiled away at Silver Lake, working on our tans and practicing our flirting.  Weekends were spent in white sundresses, driving from one graduation party to another, making sure that we were seen.  We had jobs, yes, but it seemed like we never worked.  We drank Zima with Jolly Ranchers and sometimes shots of vodka. We wore disco clothes to the Nectarine and danced in the grass at Pine Knob.  We could drink pots of coffee at Silverman's and never run out of conversation.  We were best friends.    

All Midwestern fresh-faced innocence and charm, we were wore our teenage angst like sequins.  We knew that, like all of the others that came before, this summer of 17 wouldn't, couldn't last.  Change was coming soon, it was visible on the horizon.  We could see frat parties and the Freshman 15 in the distance.  But, like all teenagers, we could close our eyes to that which we didn't want to see.  Tipsy from our own youth, drunk on summer, buzzed from too many Clove cigarettes, nothing mattered except us.

The friends that we have in high school are incomparable to any others that we'll ever have again.  We've seen each other through first kisses and broken hearts, eating disorders and parent fights, acne and terrible prom hair, mix tapes and bullies, failed tests and life-changing decisions .  We hurt each other - intentionally & otherwise.  We wear necklaces to publicly declare our friendship.  We celebrate bad decisions together.  We tell each other everything.  And I mean, everything.  We are open wounds, walking nerves, our arms constantly reaching out for each other, seeking someone else who understands.  And, in the summer of 1994, we found those someones.  

"And even when we're old, and beer isn't our beverage of choice anymore, and a phone call from a boy is just a phone call, and we hate microwave popcorn and processed cheese, and the world turns a lot slower than it used to, I'll remember us, singing too loud and off key, basking in the glow of our youth, and we were the only people on earth."  (August 1994)