On Saturday, I had wanted to stop by a kayaking store in Poolesville and I realized that baby Tristan was less than a mile away from the pile of new/used kayaks I was interested in taking a look at. I had not yet gone to visit them (either the kayaks or the baby), given the craziness of the holiday season, so I took this opportunity to pop in and say hello to Ning and the baby. Tristan looks like an Asian version of his father, he was super cute and did not fuss or cry during the hour that I was there and let me hold him and poke him gently on his pudgy cheeks. Ning was in fine form – it was an easy delivery and she is a natural mother. I did manage to also go to the kayak store, but it was a very strange experience and I did not buy any kayaks.
Saturday night, the usual suspects came over to the house for take-out A&J’s. The four of us have a tough time coordinating schedules – for four people who text most days and live within 40 minutes of each other, we see each other very rarely. Our ideal night out would be at a restaurant for dinner – no partners and/or kids, but that hasn’t happened for a long time – the last time, we were still trying to avoid covid and had dinner in my garage with the door open. This time, Laura was home managing a sick Violet (who is feeling better today) and so it was fun, but subdued. Jeremy wasn’t home, so we could have gone to a restaurant, but I would have had to take Edda, so to make it easier on me, Soojung and Lauren came to the house for takeout. Lauren baked a delicious apple pie.
Jeremy, in the meantime, is living his best life – I’m just seeing photos of him wandering around SF (we share a common stored photostream) at night having beer with young people and going to instagrammable places.
I stayed up late finishing Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow which was so, so fantastic – it hugged the shore of the timeline of my own growing up – MIT (central square) & Harvard (yard) in the early to mid-90s and then Los Angeles in the early 2000s and video games (I didn’t play them, but I did hear about them!) and lifelong girl & boy best friends and it was an incredible read. I’m on a roll, finishing a bunch of good books in a row – sometimes I feel like a child again when I read more voraciously than I do now. When I was a kid, I was quieter and didn’t seek out friends a lot and I spent a lot of time in my closet (not the metaphorical closet, I mean my literal closet) dreaming of when I could really start my life. I kind of feel the same way now, somehow a little bit trapped or stuck and waiting for my life to really start again – it’s hard to explain. Before, I kind of felt trapped by being in my parents’ house, now I feel trapped by being in my own house. I remember a friend of mine who has no partner and has a brand-new baby granddaughter and I asked if she ever wanted to move to be closer to her daughter and granddaughter who are on the left coast – and she shook her head and leaned into me and said – you know, I really enjoy being responsible for no one. And I totally get that. I picked Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and another book – Lessons in Chemistry for my white elephant gifts for the two gift exchanges I participated in during Christmas. I had read neither, but I felt like those were the two books I was most interested in that were published last year. Neither of them delighted anyone at either gift exchange (I think no one had heard of either of them), but now I’ve read them both. I did enjoy Lessons in Chemistry (about a woman chemist and TV star), but TTT took my breath away.