Bright Sunshiny Day

I realized today that this week marked exactly a year since I first saw University Land. A year ago I was sitting in a hotel room at two in the morning too anxious to sleep, frantically scrolling through apartment ratings websites on my laptop and wondering how I was going to be able to afford to live somewhere that didn't involve roach infestations and armed robberies in the parking lot, which then led to the bigger worries: would I ever make friends? What if it turned out I didn't actually have the skills to handle a PhD program? What if the whole region just sucked?
Well, I know it's a cliche phrase for a reason, but what a difference a year makes! If in May of 2007 I had been able to see how nice life was going to be in May 2008, I definitely would have been sleeping soundly. Now I drive past that very same hotel almost every day. On one end of the drive is a quiet lakeside apartment where I feel safe even if I have to take the dog out in the middle of the night. On the other end is a campus where I go to interesting classes with interesting and intelligent people and where the faculty tends much more strongly toward the supportive and friendly than towards the deprecating and intimidating. 75% of the time I feel like I know what I'm doing and like I'm good at my work, which I think is a pretty good ratio. When I'm not working I get to explore University Land and the surrounding region, which it turns out I absolutely love. I never--quite seriously, never--wish that I was back in Home State. I miss certain things about it every now and then, but if you gave me the option of moving back there or staying here, I wouldn't even have to think twice before saying, "I'll stay here, thanks." Maybe that will change in the future, but for now I'm constantly thrilled by this place: the energy in the air, the strange combination of cultures and geographic regions that clash here, the seasons, the scenery, the proximity to other fun and interesting places. I have made good friends here, the type of friends that say, "Yes," when I ask, "Can you do me a favor?" before they even know what it is that I'm going to ask. The type of friends that speak eloquently about course content but then totally make me forget I'm a student at all when two hours and three beers later we're joking about, say, what song your cervix might play if there was such a thing as a musical cervix that played a song every time you opened your legs (this was an actual conversation from earlier tonight, by the way, and I would explain how we got on that topic in the first place but it's a long story; the best song suggestion was Nicole's "It's A Small World After All," which is sadly appropriate for some occasions). And as if having good friends, a good job, and a fun home isn't enough, I've somehow even managed to snag myself a guy who makes my heart leap in my chest a little bit when he calls me from six time zones away mostly just to hear my voice, a guy who doesn't feel like he's giving anything up to only be with me for a while, a guy who, even if he doesn't end up sticking around for long for some reason, has made me realize that there are actually still some really kind, fun, interesting guys out there.
I realize I've already talked before about how happy I have been this year. I also realize that it's a bit rude to write about how great my life is going, because if your life isn't going well at the moment it's no fun to read about someone that has it easier than you, and if your life is going equally well you're probably still finding all this look-at-my-awesome-life talk pretty boring. But I can't shake the feeling that I'm really lucky right now and this luck probably won't last for long so I need to document things while they're this good. Things could change at any minute, so why look for something negative to talk about when you're in a very rare moment where it's actually possible to say, "My life is perfect right now"?

Today was like a microcosm of everything that's good in my life at the moment. I didn't have to go to work today, so instead of waking up to an alarm I woke up to a phone call from Penn. It was the first time we've actually been able to talk on the phone in over a week, so I definitely didn't mind his call waking me. We didn't talk for too long since he had a tour to get to and since there's only so long that his two friends are willing to amuse themselves before they start giving him hell about wanting to call his girlfriend, but it was a nice start to the day to be able to actually hear his laugh.
Then a few hours later when I finally got out of bed I drove my dog down to City A and met my friend and her dog so that we could walk them over to the flea market/farmers market that they set up in her neighborhood every weekend. The weather was perfect, and I was actually able to wear shorts for the first time this season.
After leaving the flea market it was back towards my neighborhood for a barbecue at my friend Sunny's house. She has a giant deck and a beautiful yard, so she invited a bunch of people over to celebrate graduation, the long weekend, and the nice weather. I took the dog with me and he was very well-behaved as I mingled all night long with a really fun group of people that included almost all of my grad school friends and their significant others as well as many of my coworkers from my new job. I even managed to get in my thirty minutes of cardio today by racing my new friend Roger's four-year-old daughter around the yard. Roger kept trying to entice her back onto the patio, saying "*A*, you don't need to do that if you don't want to," but the truth is I was having a blast. I can't remember the last time I played tag or hide-and-seek, and Roger's daughter is extremely polite and sweet and just generally so adorable I could barely stand it. When she left to go home I knelt down to say goodbye to her and she threw her arms around my neck and gave me a big kiss on the cheek and said, "Thank you, *A*, I hope we can play again someday," and I was like, "Oh boy, I'm going to have to get me one of these four-year-olds!" That is, until my dog stole an entire unattended hot dog off the patio table and I realized that since I don't really have control over my hound dog I'm perhaps not entirely ready to have a human child. That, and they have to be tiny helpless slugs and then go through that whole I-have-n0-language-but-I-want-to-communicate-and-therefore-I'm-going-to-shriek-and-whine-all-the-time thing before they're four-year-olds, so I suppose I need to take that into consideration as well.
The barbecue was such a funny juxtaposition. It was full of childhood memories.* Besides the tag and hide-and-seek, Shawn brought ice pops (which took me right back to elementary school, where I used to be able to buy an Otter Pop for a quarter after school on Tuesday afternoons and then get all blue and sticky eating it on the walk home) and Ingrid brought a giant watermelon (which reminded me of sitting out on the swingset with my brother and sister on summer evenings eating watermelon in just our underwear so that it wouldn't matter if the juice got all over us, spitting the seeds at each other).
At the same time, though, there was this moment when Nicole walked up to me and said, "Isn't this such an adult party?" and I looked around and realized she was totally right. It wasn't a typical college barbecue with red plastic cups and a keg and some hot dogs. Instead, we were grilling steak and pork and vegetables, standing on a deck drinking wine or bottled beer, chatting but always keeping a watchful eye on the backyard where the kids and the dog were racing around. I may not always feel like an adult, but the fact of the matter is that I'm no longer a part of the generation rolling around in the backyard and getting grass stains on my jeans and wondering why the heck the grown-ups think it's so interesting to just stand around and TALK. Instead, I'm a part of the generation holding a glass of wine, genuinely interested as someone talks about in-laws or the state budget or the latest play to open downtown, telling a kid that is tugging on my hand, "Just one minute, let me finish my drink first and then I'll come play with you for a while."
Part of me is a bit wistful and wonders how the heck all of my growing up happened without me really noticing. But part of me is also just relieved to finally get to this point in my life, the point where no one questions whether or not you should be placed at the kids' table or the adults' table at holidays, the point where nobody wonders aloud whether you're too young to get married/move to Europe/etc., the point where you've made enough of the big decisions to really start getting a sense of where your life could potentially be heading. It's no secret that I like a lot of stability in my life. Sure, I'm all for the adventure vacation and the occasional night of staying out until five in the morning and drinking out of those stupid red plastic cups. But if most of the next twenty some-odd years of my life is going to consist of social evenings like tonight's, I'm just fine with that.
I don't so much mind being a grown-up. It may not be perfect all the time. In fact, sometimes the responsibilities of being an adult are just a bit too much to handle. There are definitely moments when it's fun to be a kid or a teenager or a college student again for a few hours at a time. I think everyone needs to do that once in a while. But overall I must say I'm finding that its a heck of a lot easier to be an adult** than it ever was to be a kid.

*Speaking of childhood memories, this afternoon I popped into the grocery store on the way to the barbecue to buy a few bags of chips and a birthday card for a friend. While I was standing in the checkout line these kids were making a bunch of noise rifling through stuff in the sales bin behind me, so I turned around to see what they were up to and lo and behold, on the top of the sales bin was a box of Good N Fruity! I couldn't believe it. I loved Good N Fruity when I was a kid, but even back then it was sort of hard to find it. Oddly enough, I seem to remember getting it in airports a lot when we were on family vacations but having a hard time finding boxes of it just at Walgreens or 7-11 or whatever. Anyway, I hadn't come across a box of Good N Fruity in years. I thought I was just crazy, but the link above proves that it was actually discontinued for a while. Anyway, when I saw them in the bin today I got so excited that I joined the kids in rifling through the whole bin, but unfortunately there was only one box left. But that box is now mine, and I got to enjoy a handful tonight. While they're not exactly the same as I remember them from my childhood, they're definitely close enough to satisfy. Sweet!
**I suppose I should clarify that this is true of my current state of adulthood. Somehow I imagine parenthood might eventually change my position on this somewhat. Not that I'll be finding that out any time soon!