On Not Quite Growing Up

I got a surprise phone call last night from my oldest best friend in the entire world, L, who I had lost for about 10 years and just recently rediscovered, thanks to the efforts of another mutual friend, K, who moved here and found me in the Mountain Xpress article on bloggers. She was in town for one night en route to Tennessee with her sister, staying with K and so we all went out to dinner at Salsa's and then back to K's unbelievably beautiful home to drink a couple beers and talk. And talk. And talk.

It was hilarious, great, wonderful and extremely sexually graphic, which was a hoot, because I am not used to being the prude among my friends. These women were getting down with the descriptions, hon, I mean they were not leaving anything to the imagination. I had no idea that's where my G-spot was, but you know, live and learn. I think I had kids too long or something, because when the conversation gets like this I have to fight a nervous urge to hush everyone and check to make sure the kids are really asleep and not listening to vivid descriptions of the difference between clitoral and vaginal orgasms. Even though there were no kids within, probably, a 2 block radius. This attitude ensures that my kids will have to (or already have, god I don't want to know) figure out orgasms all on their own, as nature and the Judeo-Christian god decrees, and I'm okay with that. Really. They can learn from their friends - I certainly do!

My friends have all done really well in their lives and can afford nice stuff and they're happy in their careers, and also they don't have dogs, so their floors stay all clean and shiny, so when I got home last night I confess I was prey to the envy monster. I thought, oh fuck, why have I wasted my life, why didn't I get around to growing up and getting a real job instead of just still being this wild child who goes out to bars and barely makes ends meet and hasn't got anything remotely resembling a career? Why is my house so messy and cluttered and crazy (although actually I cleaned all day yesterday and it looks pretty damn nice, I think.) So I went to bed and, then, of course, had to wonder why is it that at 8:15 in the morning I have two dogs and two cats on my bed telling me it's time to get up and feed the zoo now?

So I took the dogs for a long walk out into the beautiful morning. Jackson throws his head back and bays every time he hears another dog, which is about every 10 feet or so, and people look out their windows and stop what they're doing and say things like "Coon dog! Girl you got your hands FULL now!" and "You walking them or are they walkin' YOU?" Jackson hauls me down the street and Theo holds his leash in his mouth and prances daintily like the poofter he is until he sees another dog at which point he becomes Demon Theo Attack Collie so all in all, walking them is entertaining to say the least.

But as I walked I thought about my misspent life and lack of fundage and all that, and realized, well hell, I have two kids and two dogs and two cats, and my friends don't. I chose to raise kids by myself and spend my thirties with children and somehow I didn't quite make it up or even really on to the career ladder, but these kids are growing into great, funny, interesting people. And yes, my house is cluttered and crazy, but it's full of books and records and art, the clay dinosaurs the kids made in kindergarten, plants and memories and my great grandmothers' Irish lace tablecloth. I'll never have a big gorgeous spacious beautifully empty house like K, because it's just not who I am, and that's okay. K'll never have a small cluttered bouncing house like mine, and that's good too. I love her, love all of them, and I'm so glad they're doing well and anyway, they still seem to like me. So all good.

Also, K had this idea for a job I could possibly do and maybe I won't have to go be a legal secretary after all.