One sluggish egg

I am always amazed at just how exhausting it is to have fun. I know; this is the mark of an old woman and my ovaries are probably shriveling as we speak, which I’m pretty sure we all know wouldn’t really kill me. Keeping up an active social life just might.

Friday afternoon saw a cancellation that opened the door to a Friday evening spent with wine and a good friend as well as several failed attempts to convert her to a devotee of the Ghost Whisperer, which shall remain my guilty pleasure of the year, if not the decade. Although that title may already have gone to my sick-day consumption of all available episodes of the Real World: Denver as I certifiably cannot. Get. Enough. We giggled like schoolgirls and talked about you and watched the Office and dreamed of dating both Jim and Roy (post-thick neck loss and possible anger management and/or jail time). Our evening of good, clean fun ran until 1 am. I slept. Until sometime just before 6 o’clock, that is, when the Master of My Domain decided his very survival was in jeopardy and that this extreme need for kibble warranted him pulling my left nostril with an extended claw. I was none too pleased.

I spent a sleepy Saturday with my family as my sister was in town, and gorged myself on a cheesy cup of French onion soup in a Shirlington restaurant and a considerably larger bowl of laughter when my mother referred to Penelope Cruz’s recent movie Volver as a decidedly wrong, and loud, Vulva. It was worth my audible snort. The Likey foursome spent the afternoon in the movie theater, 75 percent of our clan awake, while my fatigued and apparently movie-challenged mother snoozed through 90 minutes of strikingly tanned and attractive Richard Gere moments. I was jealous.

Nighttime brought birthday festivities at a Logan Circle bar, and I apologize in advance to anyone with whom I rubbed backs with or made eyes at across the room in a tipsy effort to get myself one of those damned missed connection posts. I don’t know when I made it home, but I do recall my best friend drunk dialing her mother on the way to ask if she knew what the word vulva meant and my shock and awe that she was actually doing so. I slept soundly on the couch until Master of My Domain decided, sometime just before 5 o’clock, that his ability to thrive was clearly in danger, and that this extreme need for kibble warranted him pulling at my right tear duct with an extended claw. None. Too pleased.

Today was a flurry of punny Easter cards, flaming irritation on my part that I was not more promptly informed of the Peep diorama contest, and a family bonding exercise in which we began our memory book, filling journal pages with each of our individual responses to burning and embarrassing questions like, “How can you not remember [insert important life event here], even though you somehow recall useless pop culture facts like Little Richard marrying Demi and Bruce?” In three hours I found out more about my parents than I learned about them in the past five years. It was beautiful and exhausting and simultaneously comforting given that no confessions of adoption or affairs were at any time disclosed. And then there was good pie.

And now I lie on my couch, Master of My Domain at my side and Cricket Likey at my head, and contemplate just how much my eyes hurt. And how sleepy I am. And how I probably should get up and clean the thin film of Pinot Noir that still remains on the kitchen tile following the Full Bottle Falling from the Top of the Refrigerator Incident of this afternoon. I’m pretty sure there is wet laundry in the washer and I have not a clue as to what I have to do tomorrow. Or frankly, what day it is. I shall avoid all of this, of course, wisely choosing instead to plan my Peep diorama submission for ’08 until sleep finally consumes me.